


To Be Determined

by TheTriggeredHappy



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Depression, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Minor Character Death, Multi, Nightmares, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rating May Change, Temporary Character Death, basically i made my skeleton son sad and he just doesnt know what to do, hes trying but also hes upset
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-23
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2018-05-03 02:40:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 58,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5273447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTriggeredHappy/pseuds/TheTriggeredHappy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sans decides he has people worth protecting and someone he still needs to Save, and Frisk may be the key to both. With his past refusing to let him go, and his future suddenly mattering, he only knows one thing; If all of this went right, he could afford to care again.<br/>The idea of that was enough to get him started.</p><p>[[Updates every other Wednesday or earlier]]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. UnknownVariable_01.AwaitingInput

Sans watched out the window, his pupils glowing faintly, a tiredness in the way he held himself. He looked (bone) tired, but still strong in a weird, backwards way. The same way a boulder under a waterfall was strong—not in that it would last forever, but in the way that it had lasted this far and knew it had time to kill. Outside the window, snow fell heavily, thick flakes sticking to the glass panes and frosting them with every sweep of wind. Perfect for packing snow, yet not even the most daring children of Snowdin would brave the harsh, biting, ripping cold that tore into them with talons if it so much as danced under the doorways. The slightest, thinnest draft sending shivers up their spines was warning enough that it was far too cold to go out and play.

 

Papyrus was nothing if not determined to do his job, however. He had left the house with piles of blankets and more than one full thermos of hot chocolate, coffee, tea, anything he could carry to warm his bones. Gloves over gloves, bundling like he was going to the Arctic itself (which wasn’t far from the truth), he marched into the snow outside that blotted out the ‘sun’.

 

He promised to be back, and for once didn’t blame Sans for not going in to work that day, simply telling him to warm up some of the leftover spaghetti if he got hungry. It was too cold for a walk to Grillby’s, Papyrus knew. While Sans knew shortcuts out the wazoo to get where he wanted to go, there wasn’t a single one inside of the house. The closest one he could possibly get to was the one in his lab, but he would need to brave outside to get there. He’d have to rely on the monolith of leftover spaghetti for his nutrition until it was warmer outside.

 

They didn’t have much food inside the house, usually. Papyrus was busy doing his job and chatting with locals and training with Undyne, so in the perfect world, responsibility would fall to Sans to get them both groceries. But he found that he just couldn’t bother, not when it was possible that the very next day he could wake up only to find that he had wasted his time, and they were gone, a reset taking away any effort he had put into shopping for food. It was easier to go to Grillby’s. Unchanging, unmoving, always-there Grillby’s where he could count on getting something to eat at any point in time if he wanted. Where it didn’t matter that nobody but him remembered a week passing and restarting, he could just eat a burger and drink ketchup and nothing mattered for a while.

 

Papyrus never asked why he only ever went to Grillby’s to eat. He had learned that asking about several of his brother’s more specific quirks only made him close off, shut down, disappear for the rest of the day into the woods maybe, which was bad, as he had learned a long time ago that if Sans didn’t want to be found, then he just plain wouldn’t be found. He was pretty good at that kind of thing—staying out of sight and mind when he just wanted some alone time. Papyrus never worried, though. Even if his brother was lazy and slept a large amount of the time he was supposed to be working, he could still handle himself just fine.

 

Sans had gotten out of bed at a pretty reasonable hour today, though. Waking up, something had seemed off to him, and when he looked out the window at what was essentially a blizzard, he knew that there was most definitely something _up._ Somehow, impossibly, there was a shift in the air pressure, something had happened in their smaller more condensed atmosphere to cause an outlier in the regular weather patterns. This snow. He had a bad feeling that somewhere, there was a _big_ change. He wasn’t sure where, or how, or why, but it was there and it was…well, it wasn’t right. And he knew for a fact that it had something to do with whatever caused the loops of time, the resets, or the reloads. The snow never changed. It fell overnight, always just a light dusting, some melting ever so slightly as the day wore on, and then being set back in place by the next day. Now it was different. Something—something _important—_ had changed here. So, using basic reasoning, he knew that the only force capable of changing things, the anomaly, was behind it. Somehow. Using some powers he didn’t know about up until this point. And… would probably use again eventually.

 

That was the second reason the snow worried him. Whatever was happening, he couldn’t monitor it if he couldn’t get into his lab, as even a single drop of moisture, a single flake of snow near the complex machinery, would ruin the entire setup and he’d be back to the drawing board.

 

Not long before, perhaps a day prior (or is it in a few days? Sometimes the days seemed so similar that he couldn’t be sure they hadn’t reset), he had gone down on his regular check-up to see if there were any irregularity in the time hops, and he found that everything had just… stopped. No more jumps, no more resets. This was okay, as sometimes time would run as usual for a few days, maybe a week or so before resetting. But it had been exactly 15 days since the last reset. But that wasn’t the most worrying part of all of this.

 

The entity in control of it had changed entirely.

 

Suddenly there were new readings, some disappearing, the small scales suddenly not large enough in some areas, and some readings no longer overlapping as they were meant to. Was it an evolution? A new iteration? Was it something else entirely? He couldn’t be sure, and that was terrifying. The singular constant, the fact that nothing could change permanently, not now and not ever, was gone. Maybe his actions mattered for once. Maybe this force was good, maybe evil, maybe it was just the imprint of the previous one and time would flow linearly. He couldn’t be sure, and that was very, very bad for him. If he knew what to expect, he would be fine. But what now?

 

…Whatever it was, he realized that he needed to tell someone. And if he did, it would need to be now. On one hand, there was the possibility that resets were gone forever and he needed to explain what had been happening, and try and figure out where the anomaly had even come from. On the other hand, they could possibly be in very real, very immediate danger now, and if so he needed to warn everyone else as soon as possible.

 

He stood in his room, eyes trained on the mirror beside his door, his pupils flickering anxiously, doubt beginning to tickle his conscience. He realized that it was possible nobody would believe him. He was sure Papyrus already worried about his mental state by now, he’d never been fully… normal in how he acted. Naturally, this had the option of putting him snugly in ‘out of his skull’ zone. He had a sudden and selfish urge to just keep it a secret and hope for the best. He shoved down the impulse. “You are not crazy. No matter what they say, you are not crazy,” he said softly. His grinning reflection seemed to mock him.

 

He picked up his phone, slowly dialing the number for Alphys. If there was anyone in the Underground who could believe him on this one, it was her. His brother would just be worried about him, Undyne would call him crazy… But Alphys he could explain things to properly, without having to work through every scientific detail, without her worrying about his psyche. She had seen crazier stuff before. Not to mention that by now, he was sure she suspected he was just a tad smarter than he let on. He knew that some of the papers he’d worked on back from… a long, long time ago had circulated in the little scientific community of the Underground. Maybe she’d seen his name written in small, precise handwriting in the corner of an old and tattered page somewhere, but once and awhile if Papyrus had gone to her for help fixing his computer she would just shove him over to Sans instead, who promptly got it working again. He knew she was the leading force in biological engineering (Mettaton’s new body alone had gotten her a place as the Royal Scientist, the little tidbits about her previous work as he knew them were pretty helpful too), and that this was definitely _not_ supposed to be part of her field of work, but nevertheless, she was the best bet he had. Any help was a big help right about now.

 

She picked up on the third ring, just as he decided that he had changed his mind and would try to do it by himself.

 

“H-Hello?” she said softly.

 

“It’s Sans,” he said simply, throat dry (as a bone).

 

“Oh, Sans, hi. I was um, just getting up for the day—what’s going on? You…a-alright?” He realized that duh, he never called anyone, only ever texted. She could probably already tell that something was up by the fact that he had called. Stupid, stupid.

 

“We gotta talk about some things,” he said flatly, deciding now was a bad time to be beating around the metaphorical bush. “I think it’s time we start telling the truth with each other, lying is starting to get really bothersome.”

 

He was slightly surprised as she went silent for nearly half a minute. Terribly, horribly silent. He glanced at his phone uneasily, wondering if she had hung up on him, only to hold the phone back up as she took a deep, shaky breath. “Sans… I d-d-on’t know w-what you’re talking about. A-and if you think you know something…something secret, I d-don’t think it would be n-nice of you t-to say anything about it.” Her voice was too high-pitched. Something was wrong. She never sounded quite like that, not even when talking about her gigantic not-crush on Undyne. She’d only acted like this when he accidentally brought up the lab that one time and—

 

He mentally face-palmed. Of course—she didn’t remember him being on the team back in the True Lab, he’d already figured this out at… some point. Must’ve been just before a reset that he had brought it up and nearly given her a heart attack. She didn’t remember that he’d been heading the team of doctors that kept the monsters stable before their sudden ‘recoveries’. The time he’d spent in the lab had been back when Dr. Gaster was okay too, working parallel to them on a different project. A _lot_ of people forgot a _lot_ of things when Gaster disappeared. A lot of things had changed when Gaster disappeared. Himself included.

 

“I’m not talking about the lab, Alphys, I already know about that, and trust me, I’m not going to tell on you,” he assured her quickly. She gasped quietly.

 

“Y-y-you…a-already…” She sounded more unnerved than she’d ever been in her entire life. But Sans had very little patience at the moment. Any second now, the anomaly could start doing just about anything, and he needed help with the numbers. The tech he had was useless now, and it starting to become outdated anyways so what it _could_ do was equally useless. He needed help from someone with more experience on this kind of delicate machinery to update and modify it to suit their purposes.

 

“Alphys, I was there in the lab with the dogs too, I saw it happen just like you did. You just don’t remember that I was there,” he said quietly. “Look, I just want some help arranging numbers over here, but since this snow clearly won’t be letting up anytime soon, I decided to get the hard conversations out of the way before you got here. Speed up the process.”

 

“S-Sans, I don’t underst—“

 

“Just listen, okay? I’ll answer questions in a minute, but until I can get you the data, you’ll… just need to run on faith with me. For a little while.” He focused on steadying his breathing. She’ll listen to you, she won’t call you crazy, he assured himself.

 

“Um… o-okay.” She still sounded unnerved, but undeterred, he took a deep breath and began his tale of woe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [So this will be a multi-chapter fic that I'll try and update on a weekly schedule. I've already set myself up with a few chapters just in case something happens and I don't have a chance to write for awhile, so for the next month or so I'm ready for regular updates. The first three chapters, however, I'll be pushing to post this week if I can. After that, I'll post regularly on Wednesdays. Have a wonderful day!]


	2. Log_Entry_14:Log.NotFound

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Hope you're ready for "Science Time with Sans", kids! Because that's most of the chapter.]

 

 

Alphys didn’t know what to think.

 

She felt almost like she was on auto-pilot, bundled up in warm clothes and walking through the snowdrifts with a large box of parts and papers in her hands. She had thought that Sans had lost it at first, naturally. Resets? Saves? The way Sans explained it, it was almost like he was describing a video game! But as he talked, she began piecing together things that hadn’t made sense before, things that she’d never even considered. What did Determination _do_ exactly, that made humans so different? Who had been the person she had answered to during her time in the lab—the King himself knew next to nothing about science! Surely _someone_ had been there to keep things organized, and when Sans slowly and clearly, each syllable cut into fine slices, said the name “Doctor W. D. Gaster”, she felt her eyes beginning to sting in the corners despite the fact that she’d never heard that name in her life…

 

Right?

 

But when he started talking in numbers, she knew. This was real. He wasn’t crazy, he very clearly knew what he was talking about. All the equations that he listed off seemed to work, she could confirm the numbers, and she was certain that nobody could know such intricate data about the composition of Determination and its deterioration outside of Souls unless they had worked on the same project as her.

 

As he talked, she fished out some old works that she’d hidden away in her seemingly endless file cabinets, and there, scrawled in precise handwriting, were the words “Dr. Sans, Specialist in the field of Theoretical Chemistry”. Right there, aging on the old, crumpling paper, written at least a few years ago by now, surely. Using several of the notes written in this thick, precisely composed packet, she had gotten nearly a third of the information she needed to get started on the project handed to her by the King. She asked Sans about the paper, and the only reply she received before he jumped back into his explanation again were the words “I finished _that_ piece of trash at about 3 AM the day I was supposed to turn it in. I got lucky that I’m not one to make typos, but it’s still a rushed job. I never got around to rewriting it. I despise that old thing.” His words accompanied by a dry, humorless laugh.

 

She realized then that it didn’t matter if she believed him or not. It was all true, and she’d just need to live with it one way or another. Just because she didn’t believe it, that didn’t make it stop being real.

 

And so here she was, shifting the large box to one arm and knocking quickly before she had the chance to drop it. Sans opened the door pretty quickly, his smile permanent, but his eyes grim. “C’mon,” he said flatly, gesturing stiffly with one hand before stuffing them back in his pockets and shuffling past her, jaw set.

 

He led her around the back of the house and unlocked the large, solid grey door there. He gestured her inside and she took note of the carefully shoveled area just in front of it, like a doormat. “Take off those boots please,” he said calmly, kicking off his own sneakers and stepping inside, her just behind, albeit more cautiously.

 

It was a lab. There was no doubt about it—the small space reminded her a lot of her own setup, only this was compressed and it looked like keys were needed to get to most of the stuff. There were a few blueprints and manila folders laid out on a small counter-like area that seemed like it might’ve been made exactly the right height for Sans’s convenience. He shuffled the papers together before she could get a good look at them, murmuring “Not important” and setting them down on a small pile of books next to something covered in a sheet.

 

“So um, this the machine then?” she asked, setting the box on the counter and pointing to the sheet-covered something, only for Sans to shake his head quickly.

 

“Also not important. Other project. Abandoned for now,” he said, the word ‘abandoned’ sounding almost painful in his mouth. Now she was _really_ curious, but she didn’t press the matter. “What we want to look at is over here.” He pushed a small crate to one side carelessly, and flipped up a section of the counter like an oversized laptop, underneath which was a setup unlike anything Alphys had ever seen.

 

To put it simply, it looked like someone had taken every Arabic and Greek letter and scrambled them together into a keyboard, then taken three screens out of a junkyard, reverse-engineered them into perfect condition and placed them on the underside of the counter itself, taken a soundboard and at least two-thirds of a rocket, then randomly placed them in the bits between. And of course, in one corner of the setup, under two boxes of what looked like reinforced glass, there was the classic Big Red Button that people had come to associate with utter doom.

 

“What is all this?” she asked, looking at the screen. Varying graphs scrolled past almost too quickly to read in a conveyor belt of information, but she noted that a large part of them were completely empty, others showing up as 0 and Undefined in their slopes, some with error messages on them.

 

“Time jumps, mostly. It’s on standby right now, waiting for input of some new equations. I’ve had to scrap most of the old ones.” He opened a drawer and pulled out a small folder, picking out several sheets of paper, all in the same meticulous handwriting. He flicked through the small stack as he talked, pointing to each paper as he described it, voice dropping his usual cool, deadpan humor and picking up a sort of crisp edge. She recognized it somehow, although she couldn’t remember him ever speaking with such articulation.

 

“These here are the ones that show up as either 0 or Undefined. These are showing up as no correlation, and these on the back are just giving me errors—I think that I might need a three-dimensional model to view them properly, the computer can’t comprehend more than two dimensions right now. A four-dimensional model would be great, but last I tried it was buggy and only worked on 66.66% of theoretical scenarios—with the sixes repeating, naturally.” He put down some of the sheets, picking up three that were covered in crossed-out words and had little tidbits written in the margins. “These here are the ones I got to work with the readings I’ve got on this baby right here.” He tapped a fourth screen that looked like it was on a screensaver, and it hopped to life, spewing numbers in three different colors that trailed past sleepily in neat, orderly rows.

 

“Where are the n-numbers coming from?” she asked.

 

“Core,” he said simply. “Got some rooms in there that help monitor temporal activity. Broadcasted way back here, it just tells me what’s going on in the time stream. Here, look at it for a second.” They both watched the numbers stream by for a few moments. “See it?”

 

“I’m not sure,” she admitted, pushing her glasses up nervously.

 

“Look here—“ He pointed at one of the numbers. “It cycles through, repeats itself. The number of times it repeats tells you how long a loop has been happening. The shorter the repeating string is, the less the likelihood of a possible reset.” There was a long pause. “The more colors, the less saves happened, and the faster it moves, the statistical likelihood of reloads given circumstances drops.” A second pause. “So do you see what exactly the problem is here?”

 

“…It’s not repeating, there’s only three colors, and it’s moving slowly.” She felt like she was an intern again in a way. Or in a collage lecture for a class she never signed up for and just showed up in halfway through the semester. And the class was being taught in a foreign language.

 

“Almost exactly. But I plug these numbers into the equations I had _before_ and I get dead ends. I had to create new equations, and nothing is working like it should anymore.” She picked up on the frustration in his tone.

 

“Why?” she cut in finally, exasperation leaking into her voice. Her brain was running in circles just trying to keep up with all of this. “Why did this happen?”

 

“Exactly what we’re going to find out.” He started opening drawers, pulling out folders, seeming to move slightly faster than speed and inertia would allow, making her head spin as he got from one side of the room to another in two steps. “So far, I’ve gathered this much—the anomaly has yet to come into contact with the Core, it’s definitely in the Underground, and it’s definitely corporeal right now. It seems to be behaving in the visible light spectrum, so we can see it and touch it, and it’s definitely down here. Also it moves and has multiple energy readings that have fluctuated since this morning, and even since we walked in here. Therefore, to recap, if it’s A.) Made of matter, B.) Has fluctuating energy levels, C.) Is in the visible light spectrum, and D.) Moves, the smart money’s on it being a living thing, almost definitely intelligent life of some kind given the circumstances. And, given that it’s visible, I want to try and _finally_ get this thing down on documentation. Picture, live feed, anything we can get. But first we need to see if we can figure out where it even _is_ , since “Not on the Surface” and “Not in/on/with the Core” isn’t very specific and we just don’t have time to put cameras everywhere.”

 

There was a long moment as he flipped through a few files, trying to find one chart he’d yet to try and update, in which he didn’t realize just how quiet the room was. He suddenly looked up, about to say something again, and he that’s when he saw her expression. She just looked… sad. When she spoke, her voice was hardly above a whisper, yet somehow it still reverberated in the tiny, cold room. “Sans, how long have you been doing this?” she asked.

 

He said nothing for a moment, then another, then a third. “Just… y’know,” he murmured. “I’ve been trying to figure out the new equations for… maybe two days. Give or take.”

 

“Not on this… new anomaly, Sans. On this entire project,” she asked. He swallowed hard, glanced at his feet.

 

“Just… awhile.”

 

“Sans, you’ve been sitting in here and working on this _all by yourself_ all this t-time?” she asked. He flinched at the sympathy in her voice. He didn’t want anyone’s pity.

 

“I’m fine,” he asserted, his tone sharp, cutting.

 

“That’s n-not what I asked,” she replied.

 

“Alphys, can we just get to work?” he asked (talk about unlikely sentences, he thought to himself bitterly), turning and beginning to type on the strange keyboard, his motions fluid and easy, but his shoulders stiff, his smile seeming even more forced than normal. “I don’t know how long we have until things shift again. We need to be ready.”

 

“Sans—“

 

“Please.”

 

She paused for a long moment before exhaling gently, taking a seat by the folders. “What do you need me to do?” she asked, voice full of defeat.

 

“I need you to get cameras to monitor the doors leading out of the Ruins and a few more scattered on the bigger pathways through the Underground, especially the links between the bigger landscapes,” he said. “Hook them up to some monitors in here and some more in your lab if you want. Meanwhile, I’ve got to do a _lot_ of guess-and-check,” he said. She nodded once, and it was in the three hours following, passing by in silence, each working on their own branch of an enormous, nigh impossible project, that she realized she’d never seen Sans scared like this before.

 

As she worked at setting together the cameras and trying to hook up a live feed, every once and a while she found a moment to sneak a look at the files on the floor. She felt bad snooping through his other work, but she needed to be sure that he hadn’t made it all up. If there was anything about the lab in here… she had to know if it was true. That would be the final piece of evidence to her. She looked at the blueprints, what looked to her like some plans for the Core, with strange, looping, repeating, shaky handwriting dotting it. The symbols were familiar and completely foreign to her.

 

But suddenly she found different papers, with legible handwriting on them. Physical logs from a project of some kind. The first five or so were missing as far as she could tell, a sheet of paper not included, but the rest seemed to be there and fully intact. She began reading, glancing up to check that Sans wasn’t looking.

 

“Log 6: All of the patients are behaving as usual: that is to say, on the verge of death. Our medicine can only keep them going for so long before there’s nothing else we can do. A doctor from the other wing came by, asked me some questions about theory on something neither human nor monster, such as a semi-animate object. No idea what for. Plans submitted today to clear out the storage wing just past the sleeping room.”

 

“Log 7: The head scientist on the experimentation block has stopped putting in requests and has just started upping the amount of the solution each patient is given. I’d be worried, but I’ve double checked the math, and I’m giving everyone in the testing groups three days, tops. Last chance. Everyone in the control group is in critical. I’ve worked three shifts in a row, so excuse my handwriting.” It was concise nonetheless.

 

“Log 8: They’re awake. I don’t know how, but almost everyone is awake in the test groups A and B. Otherwise, three of the control group died overnight. The rest had their families in today to say their goodbyes. I’m not getting out of the office tonight, I think.”

 

“Log 9: Everyone’s walking around. All of the control group has turned to dust, but both test groups are alive and well. The team is halfway done with giving physicals the second one, and everyone is perfectly healthy. The Doc doesn’t know what to do now. There was some problem in the far wing with the plants I think, he went to investigate that. Nothing interesting I guess.”

 

She swallowed hard. She knew for certain what was coming next, but she couldn’t stop reading.

 

“Log 10: I got sent home early, but I’m keeping the Doc company until he gets let off too. Not going home without him. _Everyone_ gets to go home day after tomorrow, since they’re all fine. G is supposed to be the one to finally turn them over, and until then he’s all alone to watch and make sure everyone’s good. I could stand to take some overtime. I’m getting us pizza.”

 

“Log 11: I don’t know what’s happening. Nobody else was here to help, W. D. ran to get the king, and all I could do was watch. They sounded like they were in pain. I’m terrified. I can’t stop crying and I don’t know why.”

 

“Log 12: I don’t know what’s going on. The test groups melted last week and everything is on lockdown. I got a message that just said “I’m sorry I couldn’t save them” in G’s code. Now it disappeared and nobody remembers him. One of the other people on med watch forgot that I was on her team in the lab even though my keycard still works. I think G is dead. I can see these weird things in the air and space seems different now. I’ve had nightmares three days in a row. I have no idea what to do.”

 

The last paper wasn’t on the same stationary. Instead, it was on wide-ruled notebook paper. “Log 13: I feel obligated to finish this. Write down what I can remember. The doctor in charge of the other wing is locked up in the lab, last I heard. I keep forgetting who Gaster was. Even Papyrus forgets him. I know Papyrus should remember him, but I don’t remember why. Today happened three times. I’m scared that I might give up like W. D. did and everyone will forget me. We can’t afford to live in the capital now. The families don’t remember me, thank god. But that poor girl in the lab… I hope she’s okay.”

 

So… it was true. Everything was there, everything that had happened in the lab was there on the paper. It was all true.

 

In that moment, she realized that she was in much deeper than she had thought...

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Phew, this was a doozy to write! Didn't mean for it to be almost 2,900 words. I guess i got carried away since, in case you couldn't tell, I'm a huge science nerd.  
> The next chapter should be up by the end of the week, and until then hope you enjoyed! Thank you so much for all the kudos, it means a lot to me, have a great day or night, everyone!]


	3. SecurityProtocol_Intruder.Sector1A

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [One of these days I won't make my characters suffer. That will be a grand day indeed. Hope you enjoy!]

 

 

The cameras were all set up. Alphys had put some down on the way back to her house, and Sans had scattered them in various places she couldn’t (read as; didn’t want to) get to. Sans knew all there was to do now was monitor and wait.

 

And wait. And wait.

 

While Sans took the job of making sure there were no spikes in activity, Alphys was put on camera duty. The last thing they needed was to lose this thing, but as Sans stared at the graphs, all either flickering or doing nothing at an entirely regular pace, he wondered if Alphys at least got to see anything cool. All he had was guesswork and some vague inkling of hope.

 

It was about four days in when the first problem occurred. Alphys called him up just as he decided it was finally time for lunch (he just couldn’t seem to get a _break_ around here, rimshot). He picked up the phone, sudden energy spiking through him. Four days of waiting around tended to give people a kind of tension.

 

“What happened?” he asked immediately, all pleasantries aside. Both of them were pretty happy to figure out that they didn’t have to waste time going back and forth with the “How’s it going” “Good, you” “Great, how’s the wife” “Wonderful, how’re the kids” “Kids these days with the sports and the phones” “I know, right” stuff. Both of them were pretty horrible at it anyways.

 

“N-nothing too important happened,” Alphys said hurriedly. “But the camera by the door to the Ruins is blocked with snow.”

 

“…and you couldn’t just text me _because…?_ ” he asked, relaxing slightly, still a little on edge.

 

“Well… I-I _think_ it’s snow.” A pause. “It might be static. All I know is that there’s a lot of white and grey stuff on the screen for that camera, and if the camera is down I’d rather talk you through it than have to text you the instructions.”

 

He sighed. “Fine.” He stepped to the corner of the room, where a miniscule, nearly invisible crack in space itself allowed him to pass through to any similar cracks, anywhere else in the Underground. He wasn’t sure entirely how it worked, in a technical sense. It might be magic, it might be a wrinkle in spacetime, he had no idea. Nobody else could see them, as far as he could tell. But they were pretty convenient for hopping around from place to place, as shown when after stepping through, he appeared a dozen paces from where he needed to be. “I’m here.”

 

He heard her sigh on the other end of the line. “Are you ever gonna explain your sh-shortcuts, Sans?”

 

“Not on your life,” he said with a snicker. “Alright, it looks like you were right. Snow on the lens, I’ll wipe it off.” He rubbed at the camera hidden in the bush with the inside of his jacket. “Ok, can you see me now?”

 

“Yes, I can see you st-standing there looking like you haven’t slept in three d-days, and I can also s-see that your shoes are untied.”

 

He glanced down at his feet and realized he was wearing slippers, hearing a short giggle from the other end of the phone. “Oh, ha ha ha,” he said, glaring halfheartedly at the camera. “I’m hanging up now.”

 

“Alright. I’ll call you if there’s any more stuff to do.”

 

“Right. Bye.” He hung up and was about to turn and leave when he heard a soft knocking. He looked at the door and heard a gentle, familiar voice.

 

“Hello? Is that my friendly jokester?” came a voice from the other side of the door.

 

He smiled, shuffling over to lean on the door. “Fancy seeing you here,” he said.

 

He’d discovered this voice entirely by accident. One day he’d been standing out here in the middle of nowhere, alone in the woods, trying to practice his newly found teleportation trick, when he’d heard humming from somewhere nearby. He’d called out hello, a voice had answered, and three door puns and a knock-knock joke later he had a new friend. He was lucky—a new friend was just what he was looking for right about then.

 

“You disappeared for quite a while, I was worried something happened. I missed talking to my door friend,” she said.

 

“Sorry, you must’ve felt pretty bone-ly,” he said. The laugh that answered him reminded him that he had been missing out, all locked away in that lab of his.

 

“Of course. But… there is also another reason,” the voice said, tone suddenly falling quieter. His eyebrows furrowed. “Can you make me a promise?”

 

“…Yes. What is it?” he said, seriousness trickling into his voice.

 

“Can you promise me, if a human ever falls down here—“ He snorted. “No, I mean it. If a human ever falls down here, can you promise me you will protect them and keep them safe, no matter what?”

 

He thought for a long moment. That was such a strange promise to make. He exhaled slowly, resolve crossing his face. “I promise.”

 

“Thank you. Thank you so much,” she said, and there was so much relief there that he felt a second stab of concern. “I must go for now. Goodbye.”

 

“Um… yeah. Bye.” He couldn’t help but feel unnerved by this turn of events. He ended up back in his lab a few moments later, and before he knew it he was typing out a text to Alphys.

 

“hey alphys, can you patch one of my monitors into the camera you just had me fix? i got a bad feeling about that entry point”

 

“A bad feeling??”

 

“yeah, i can feel it in my bones”

 

“Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhh SANS WHY”

 

“cmon that was a good one”

 

“It was NOT a good one Sans. I’m patching you in now, accept the request”

 

“thanks a million”

 

“Yeah yeah let me work you ~*bone*~head”

 

“hahaha im so proud you have no idea”

 

He received no reply, but he could imagine that Alphys was rolling her eyes.

 

* * *

 

 

His eyes threatened to close, but he tried to focus on the screen. There was snow and snow and more snow. Papyrus was starting to get mad at him every once and awhile, with him avoiding his work at the sentry station (he was still watching technically, but just from his lab, while also monitoring three other screens’ worth of data). But Sans, on the other hand, was getting worried. It seemed like the activity had died down on a regular schedule for about ten hours each day, only to flare up again around morning each time. He was now positive that this had to be a living, sentient being. This short span that the activity seemed to die down during reminded him of what a sleep schedule looked like (not for him though—he hadn’t really slept in several days by this point). It being a living, sentient being was a cause for minor alarm, given how he’d still yet to find it after six days. Either it was hiding, it was immobile, or there was somewhere he hadn’t looked yet.

 

He thought he heard someone laughing and looked over his shoulder, expecting to see someone behind him. The room was empty. He chided himself mentally that of course there was nobody there, nobody else could get into this room. He was in his lab. He could’ve sworn that his little lab had a metal floor, yet here was carpet—

 

No, the floor was metal. He rubbed his eye sockets. His hands were shaking, and he felt a stab of annoyance that he hadn’t brought more coffee. Or at least more strongly caffeinated coffee. It was late. Or early, depending on how one looked at it. Or saw it. Or woke up. His eyes shot open, despite him never having closed them. The graphs had changed. No they hadn’t.

 

“Keep your focus, Sansy boy.” He said softly to himself, shaking drowsiness from his skull. Skull, skull, skull. Numbskull. Insult and description. His skull was numb. He was a numbskull who caused only irritation and annoyance to people around him. Idiot. He shook his head like Greaterdog did after erupting from a snowdrift. No more negativity, you’re trying to work. Negative slope. The thing was sleeping. Sleep, sleep. Snowdeep. Snowdin. It was so late. Something about dogs and bones. No, skulls.

 

He woke up and saw a figure on the screen.

 

 

 

He leapt to his feet, heart pounding as a rush of deja-vu erupted, closing up his lungs, stopping his breathing for a moment as he clutched his chest. Waking up, a figure there, a flash of silver going one-two and there was red on gold, his brother was dust—

 

A kid.

 

Reality came into view slowly, comfortingly, wrapping around him like a blanket. He knew this feeling. Somewhere, time had jumped. Or _would_ jump, or _could_ jump, and he was never quite sure which it would be. Possibility and probability were two different things. Schrodinger’s cat. Until confirmed or denied, it could be neither of the two answers, and so was both at the same time despite the impossibility of such a situation occurring.

 

Whatever was happening, the outcome had yet to be determined. Determine. Determine. Weird word, like detriment phonetically, datamine visually. Data mine. DAH-tuh or DAY-duh?  Dat-er-mind. Determine. Weird.

 

He slapped himself. The sting brought him back to where he was standing in his lab, woke him up fully, allowed him to finally think clearly. The kid was peering, eyes squinted, into the camera. Confused, nervous. A little kid. A human. He shook the sleep out of his head, focused himself on what was happening. The kid was looking into the camera, a young, human kid. A human.

 

_A human._

 

He jumped into action, hand moving of its own accord to call Alphys. Five rings later and he had no answer. She must be asleep. A flurry of text messages came next. “alphys theres a kid by the ruins” “wake up you weaboo naptime is over” “alphys seriously” “i think it might be the thing its human thats why the readings are so weird and im not picking up any magic still its because humans dont have any” “god damn it wake up and experience this epiphany with me you reptilian dorkus”

 

With no response, he stared at the monitor. The kid was looking around now, eyes weary, arms curling around their shoulders. They looked cold, and also stunned by the snow around them. This was a kid. He felt his breathing beginning to even out as he realized he’d never considered that the force that was slowly destroying his psyche and had been ripping him to shreds for about a year now might have been replaced by a less terrible force. They didn’t know any better, and might not even know they had these powers yet. This was just a little kid waltzing all alone into Snowdin.

 

This wasn’t some terrible, horrible force come to destroy them, it was just a kid.

 

…A _human_ kid…

 

He remembered his promise to the voice behind the door, and immediately thereafter began cursing with such vigor and ferocity that he could imagine a mother somewhere was covering her child’s ears out of maternal instinct alone. He couldn’t help it, not after the universe had just dunked him so thoroughly with this ultimate karmic twist. The force that had nearly driven him out of his mind was now replaced by the one thing he had sworn to protect. After what to everyone else was something like a year or two, but to him was much, much longer, the universe had been screwing him over, gaslighting him, and making him question his own sanity. It had taken his job, his mental state, his work, and now it decided it would all round out in a gorgeous coda all leading up to him being offered the choice of either his morals or his pride.

 

Somewhere, he imagined a higher being laughing at this, the joke to top the combined effort of every one he’d made over the course of his life. Man, that was _hilarious._ Was this what it felt like to snap? He’d always heard that nobody just became completely nuts, they always _snapped._ Was he supposed to start running around with a knife killing everything in sight, no mercy, complete genocide? Was that what a heartless madman would do? Definitely.

 

Really, he just felt like some lasting shred of him had still cared up until now, and poof, it was gone. In a way, it was liberating. Exactly 0% of him cared. Great. Awesome. What was great, exactly, one may ask? Don’t know, don’t care. At all. And that was just fine!

 

As he stood there though, he felt increasingly like that wasn’t true. Maybe instead, his indifference had snapped and now he cared entirely. All or nothing. Maybe his bitterness to the universe at large had snapped.

 

All he knew was now he was laughing. It was funny! (What was funny?) It was the funniest thing he’d ever heard! (He wanted to cry.) He just couldn’t stop laughing! (Why can’t he stop laughing?) In fact, he didn’t _want_ to stop laughing! (If he stopped laughing, he might cry instead.) He wished he could just laugh and laugh like this for the rest of his natural life! (If he stopped laughing, he might start thinking about how hopeless everything was again.) His chest started hurting with the large, deep laughs erupting from his vocal chords, and it was great! (He remembered the message Gaster had sent him, and how easily, how quickly he wondered if it would be so hard to follow him.) He had to sit down, otherwise he would just fall right over, he was laughing so hard! (He remembered the sounds he’d heard on the other side of the door in that dark lab, he was so terrified, trapped in his office, no light, with that… those poor people.) They might just have to invent a new acronym for how hard he was laughing, because ‘lol’ wasn’t enough, nor were ‘lmao’, ‘rofl’ or even the less commonly used ‘lmfao’ just didn’t cut it, this was so darn funny! (He wished he could stop wondering if people would miss him if he died. He wished he didn’t already know. He wished he had more than two or three people who would bother scattering his ashes. He wished he had somewhere he would want them scattered.) If he laughed any harder, he might very well crack a rib! Him being a skeleton, it might very well just pop off his ribcage and clatter to the ground if he kept laughing like this!

 

Although Sans had no way of knowing it at the time, he was having something a lot like a nervous breakdown. The combination of him finally seeing the one thing he feared above everything else in the world, him realizing that he had no real reason to be afraid of said thing, him finally being able to come to terms with what happened to Gaster on some deeper level, him deciding that he had no choice but to forgive the object of his fear and loathing, and finally the fact that he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in four days straight and was alive entirely due to caffeine all ended up with him having a short period in which his mind’s higher functions shut down entirely. This, while terrifying at the time, was a pretty healthy response given the circumstances.

 

However, after a minute or so, when he finally caught his breath, he chose the less healthy option of trying his best to forget about what had just happened, and to now try and pretend nothing had been wrong, and that he should just move forward like he wasn’t in a fragile mental state at the moment. He collected his fragmented thoughts and decided that the _smart_ option would be to sit back and try and get a better read on this kid before he did something reckless.

 

But now the kid was walking into his turf, and he decided that he might as well play along with this sick, twisted slap of fate (his face still stung from the literal slap he had delivered himself, adding _yet another_ layer of irony to his agony onion). The _fun_ option would be to talk to this kid and try and face his fears like a goddamn grown-up, maybe even turning this back around on the universe by being pals with this walking monstrosity. And since he never usually had a ‘fun’ option to choose from, he decided that he had a new friend to meet.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Thanks for reading everyone, it sure took awhile for the small child to get to the Underground, huh? Now's where things are going to get interesting, and my update schedule will fall to once a week on Wednesdays. Depending on how it goes, after holidays I might bump it up to twice a week!  
> Anyways, have a wonderful day, stay safe out there over the next few days, and all your support is really appreciated! Until next chapter, bye!]


	4. Enable.SecurityProtocol/SHUTDOWN_098114111

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [And now things get interesting. Hope you enjoy the chapter!]

 

“Human.” His voice seemed to almost echo in the deadly, pressing silence of the forest. He knew what he wanted to say, had rehearsed it in his mind already. First mess with the kid, act like you’re a big joke. Act like you’re not so tough. That way, if this kid does turn out to be crazy-bonkers, you’ll be placed far, far away from the list of possible threats. If all else fails, he had to be sure that Alphys would have time to help people escape. He had to be prepared for the worst (because according to his track record, the worst was the only thing that ever seemed to happen to him). “Don’t you know how to greet a new pal?” He wanted to laugh at the words, but that would ruin the mood he had going here. Pals by circumstance, not by choice. “Turn around and shake my hand.”

 

The kid turned slowly, shaking like a leaf, eyes squinted nearly closed as if they were scared of what they would see, an extended flinch from the figure in front of them. He extended his hand silently, and he watched determination cross the child’s expression. Wow, a lot of courage in this one, wasn’t there? They moved forward, gripping his hand bravely and firmly.

 

_“PPPPPPBBBBBHHHTPBHTPBHTPBHTPBBBbbbbBBBhhhhhTtTTtTtTTplbrplbrplblblbrplbprfweetfweetfweeeeeeeteeeteeteet…eet...poot.”_

 

Sans watched their expression morph from shock, to confusion, to a barely repressed grin as the whoopee cushion was squeezed. A brief pause of silence fell as the woods around them seemed to stare in shock and disgust at him. Finally, they burst into wild giggles, covering their mouth with their hand in an attempt to stifle them. Sans smirked as well, delighted to get a laugh rather than an eye roll like he usually did with that joke, dangling the rubber embodiment of pranking itself from his fingers. “Ah, the old whoopee cushion in the hand trick. Always funny,” he said, feeling genuinely charmed as the kid began giggling again. “Anyways, my name is Sans. Sans the skeleton. You’re a human, right? That’s too rich.” The kid nodded, suddenly looking a little nervous again, glancing at their feet. He felt inexplicably and irrationally sorry for this child. He put his hands in his pockets awkwardly and kept talking. “I’m _technically_ supposed to capture you, but… y’know. I don’t really care that much. My brother though, he’s a human-catching fanatic. It’s his number one goal.” The kid looked scared for a second, and Sans shook his head. “Oh, don’t worry, he’s harmless,” he reassured them.

 

Suddenly, he glanced down at their other hand and noticed that they carried a small stick, just a bit longer than a pencil and just thin enough to fit comfortably in their hands. He noticed how they didn’t carry it like a weapon, instead more like a cane of sorts. A good sign, body language was important. They were pretty short, even shorter than he was. Couldn’t be older than eight years old. He felt guilt rising in his chest. How had he thought this kid would be dangerous? They were just lost is all. Instinctively he felt the deeply-seated urge to protect them (which he figured was okay, since he kind of had to now).

 

Suddenly the kid wrapped their arms around themselves, and he realized they were beginning to shiver. “Hey, you look cold, I think you could stand to go somewhere warm, huh?” They nodded eagerly. “Look, it’s up to you, but… I’d feel bad if I didn’t at least _show_ my brother a human. He’d be thrilled to meet you, I bet.”

 

Their expression told him that they were dubious, but he ruffled their hair gently (instinctually, like some kind of residue from when Papyrus was younger too, although he never had any hair, of course). “Like I said, he’s harmless. Just really likes his job.” He pointed behind them. “The bars are too wide to stop anyone, so, just go ahead through if you want. He should be just up ahead.”

 

They carefully slipped through the bars and he followed behind, having walked this way before dozens of times. They looked curiously at the lone lamp and the small shack, only to step halfway behind Sans quickly as Papyrus approached, looking miffed.

 

“Sans!!” he said, voice elevated in his irritation. “What are you even doing!? It’s been eight days and you still—“ He froze as he noticed the small figure gripping onto Sans’s sleeve like it was a life raft, peering out from behind him curiously. There was a beat of silence as Papyrus stared, mouth agape. “Sans, oh my god, is that—“

 

“Papyrus,” Sans cut in, stopping him mid-sentence, giving him a meaningful look. “This is my… my new friend. Little pal, this is my brother Papyrus. Say hi.”

 

The kid peeked further from behind Sans, waving warily. The two of them stared at each other for several moments before Sans rolled his eyes.

 

“Kid, why don’t you introduce yourself?” Sans suggested quietly, voice falling to a murmur.

 

The kid looked at their feet, shuffling them silently, before looking back up at Sans. Suddenly, he came to a realization. This kid hadn’t spoken a word since he’d seen them. He pulled his hands from his pockets and flashed a few words of sign language. “Is this how you usually speak?” he asked slowly, and the kid’s eyes brightened, excitement lighting up their face.

 

“You speak sign language?” they signed quickly.

 

“Everyone down here knows at least a little bit,” he returned (although he wasn’t sure about the full explanation as to why exactly that was). He looked up at Papyrus. “Hey Pap, you still up to speed on hands?” he asked aloud. Papyrus nodded. “Go on, kid,” he signed, before returning his hands to his pockets.

 

Frisk turned to his brother and began signing out works precisely. “Hello, my name is F-R-I-S-K, it’s great to meet you!” They were grinning widely, expression bright.

 

“Oh!” Papyrus said. “It is nice to meet you too, small human,” he signed out clumsily. Frisk giggled, and Sans relaxed.

 

“I can hear you, you can talk if that’s easier for you,” Frisk signed out, and Papyrus grinned, nodding in understanding and relief.

 

“Anyways bro, the kid’s pretty cold, do you think you could take ‘em home so they can warm back up?” Sans asked. Papyrus looked torn for a moment.

 

“Sans, that is a human!”

 

“Yup.”

 

“We are sentries!”

 

“Mmhmm.”

 

“We are _supposed_ to stop humans from getting into the Underground!”

 

In that moment, as if the universe had aligned for this sole purpose, the timing impeccable beyond belief, Frisk sneezed. It was like they’d flipped a switch with this simple, involuntary movement.

 

“Oh my goodness, they’ll catch a cold, why aren’t they in proper winter attire!? Sans, do you have a blanket, we need to get the small human out of the snow before they get sick! I will make them spaghetti to warm them up when we get to the house, can you run ahead and start boiling water for the noodles? Wait, I’m pretty sure you’ve never ran a day in your whole life, nevermind, but can you—”

 

Sans stifled a laugh at the utter befuddlement on Frisk’s expression as Papyrus fussed over them. “Hey, Pap, I have a better idea. I’ll take the kid up to Snowdin, you go on and pick up some stuff to make soup. Y’know, just in case they’re sick.”

 

“That’s a brilliant idea, Sans! I, the great Papyrus, will defeat this illness before it even has the chance to form! Nyeh heh heh!” He dashed off at improbable speeds, and Sans patted the kid on the back.

 

“Alright, so you’re already on his good side,” he said. “C’mon, let’s get you to Snowdin. You seriously need to get on some warmer clothes, you’re soaked to the _bone._ ” Frisk groaned at the bad joke good-naturedly as Sans herded them towards Snowdin.

 

* * *

 

 

The kid was asleep on their couch.

 

It was funny. In a few short hours, he went from sleeping in his lab, afraid of some force he had no idea about, to letting it borrow his blanket and giving it—or them, as he had already started thinking to himself (kid seemed to prefer it)—a warm welcome into his house along with his brother (who still claimed it wasn’t fair to catch a _sick_ human when he thought Frisk couldn’t hear them). Sans had taken care of making the soup, since he was better at reading and following the directions than Papyrus was, and his brother seemed elated to find that Frisk thought his racecar bed and action figures were really cool. As the soup came to a boil, he had listened to his brother rambling on upstairs. He had almost felt bad as he pulled Frisk away to get something to eat, but he was nothing if not a good host. Frisk had eaten the soup, listened for another half-hour or so to Papyrus, before promptly conking out on their ratty, distorted, change-filled sofa. He wondered briefly if he would ever get his blanket back with the way Frisk was clutching it.

 

Sans knew that the next day, they would no doubt be herded back into the woods by Papyrus, who would surely insist that all the puzzles be completed now that the human was definitely healthy (as they probably would be by then). He would have to tag along at that point just to keep Papyrus from launching the kid into anything too dangerous, and also just to keep an eye on them. He might think this kid was alright, but people made mistakes, and he didn’t want to get stabbed in the back for being too careless. Or, worse, allow Papyrus to get hurt because of his own laziness.

 

Already Alphys was trying to dig up some old info that she had in the archives about humans so he could plug in the numbers more accurately. The local library (or librarby?) was helpful about it too. So far he’d gotten significantly better at his guess-and-check game having a small human in mind, and he had (many of) his graphs in his lab up and running again, all displaying as they should be.

 

In the meantime, he felt guilt weighing on him like a lead brick as he noticed that the mysterious machine was gathering dust under that tarp of his. He swore to himself that once he was sure this kid wasn’t going to hurt themselves or anyone else, he would get back to work on it. He was so close! Any day now it would finally be up and running again if he could just fix that one last part!

 

He ignored the little voice in his mind that murmured, “You’ve been saying that for almost eight months now.”

 

The kid wouldn’t say much about their past, who they were, where they came from. They thanked him for the soup, smiled at his bad illness-related puns (they would get sick of them eventually, what with the feverish pace he was making them, it’s snot hard to do once you get the hang of it), and they listened to Papyrus ranting. Good listener, this kid was. But never was a single secret given up about who they were. He could respect that in a way, but it did make him uneasy enough to return regularly from behind the house to go check and see if they were awake yet throughout the afternoon. They slept through the rest of the day and all of the night. For the first time in a while, Sans slept in his room (Papyrus was getting concerned about him), and the only reason he woke up so early was Papyrus knocking at his door (and seeming elated to find him there) to get him out of bed.

 

That next day, as predicted, was spent with Papyrus pulling the kid through half of Snowdin on the search for puzzles. Sans had skipped over the puzzles the day before, preferring to just get the small, easily breakable friend out of the cold, but they dominated them for the most part (even stopping to complete Sans’s, although they did ask nicely for a pen). They had yet to abandon their stick still, and on one or two puzzles, Frisk used it to draw out possible solutions. They stopped to pet Lesser Dog (quite extensively), chatted with Icecap, chuckled with Snowdrake, and was only a little tiny bit annoyed with Jerry (screw Jerry). He kept a careful eye out when they tackled Greater Dog with hugs and petting, and they managed to confuse the young dog couple into thinking they were a puppy. Sans was amused as the tile puzzle fizzled out before his very eyes, and entirely unsurprised when Papyrus disabled the bridge of death. However, he was pleased to find that none of the monsters in town batted an eye at the fact that a human was here. Each and every fuzzy resident of their little town smiled and chatted with Frisk, who took the time to listen to all of them, nodding along occasionally, smiling silently.

 

He managed to coerce them into getting a bite to eat with him later in the day, where he continued his lines of questioning. The kid was relentlessly silent, their hands not giving up a single secret but for the fact that they were ambidextrous. He chugged some ketchup and tossed out some offhand words about a theory he’d been turning over in his head about the previous entity. Hopefully this kid could give him some insight. The second he mentioned a flower, though, the kid started looking scared, panicky. He tried his best to smooth it over, switching over to making up some story about an echo flower based on something Papyrus had brought up a lot a few weeks ago, but he was almost positive now. The previous entity had been something not a monster or a human. Instead, it was a soulless being with trace elements of determination. A flower. The same kind as had been living in the far hallway.

 

Not good, but could be worse. He didn’t know what he would tell Alphys, though, she’d be crushed. Assuming that she didn’t already know, of course. He tried to squish down his paranoia, deciding that the idea of Alphys being in on… whatever was happening… was impossible and ridiculous (right?).

 

Eventually, he decided that the bar was getting a little too crowded and he decided that it would be a good idea to go for a walk (he needed fresh air). He jokingly asked the kid to pay and he left the bar, tossing the words “Put it on my tab” over his shoulder as he left.

 

He was overlooking the area by his hot dog stand in Hotland when he got a call from Papyrus. His brother preferred phone calls to text messages any day, yet another difference between the two skeleton brothers. Mostly because he preferred to be able to hear the other person, and partially because he claimed the buttons were a little hard to use with his thick gloves. When he spoke, his voice was slightly quieter than usual, and that made Sans uneasy. Apparently, Papyrus said slowly, almost hesitantly, he had let the small, fragile, practically defenseless child go to try and fight Asgore, dash through the entire underground, and get through the barrier all by themselves, while hopefully not dying along the way.

 

Sans somehow saw that coming.

 

He did his best to keep up with the kid, either with his regular updates from Alphys or his own space shenanigans. In each picture Alphys sent, they looked increasingly tired, but also increasingly driven. He felt some kind of strange pride for them when he was told that they hadn’t attacked a single person yet, and no matter how beaten up they looked, they still refused to use any of the hidden power Sans was certain that they possessed.

 

As time dragged on, he began to wonder if the kid even knew about any of it. These time resets, reloads, the ability to jump around at will or at random as they pleased. It seemed like they didn’t, as he wasn’t picking up anything weird whenever he checked his monitors. He watched and checked and waited and he never noticed signs of any kind of jump.

 

Until, eventually, he did.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Hahaha, OH BOY.  
> This was actual hell to edit, but now we're finally getting somewhere! Thank you everyone for reading, shoot me a kudos if you enjoy so far, and have an absolutely astounding week!]


	5. T(t)=ae^kt+T

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Wowie, I'm excited for the upcoming few chapters! This one went through three drafts, enjoy the product of my efforts, friends.]

 

 

Alphys woke up to the sound of her phone ringing. She scrambled with her sheets, jumping to her feet and dashing across the room to pick it up from her desk. She glanced down at the screen to see who was calling her and noticed with a jolt that it was from Sans. And, after another moment, she realized to her great confusion and annoyance that it was 1:26 AM.

 

Alphys pondered just letting it ring out before she picked it up quickly at the tail end of the final ring. “S-Sans, you—“

 

“Where’s the kid?”

 

She blinked at his tone. She couldn’t quite place how he sounded. “What?”

 

“Frisk, they—where are they now and where were they four hours ago?”

 

“Sans, it’s one in the morning, you—“

 

“Couldn’t sleep. _Where was the kid?_ ”

 

She thought hard, her tired mind running in circles sluggishly. “Um… about that, they…they w-were fighting Mettaton. He was giving them some puzzles and whatnot, actually, there was this one where they k-kept up surprisingly well, but, they lost and I had to b-bail them out. I think they’re heading to the Core soon, but, they said they would recharge a little first. I’m not sure where they are, right this moment, but… I could try and… f-find them?”

 

“Can you find me a recording of it? This puzzle they did?”

 

“Uh, y-yeah. Sure thing.” There was a moment of pause as Alphys went and began typing in the Undernet search engine on her laptop. She clicked enter and spoke again as she scrolled. “Sans, why were you up at one AM anyways?”

 

A long, long pause.

 

“Sans? Hello?”

 

“Uh, you wanna send the link through my phone? I’ll just set it up with one of my monitors I have right here.”

 

“Wait, are you in your l-lab?”

 

“Yeah, why?”

 

She sighed softly, rubbing her eye with her hand. “Sans, you c-can’t be up in the middle of the night just d-doing math, it’s _weird_.”

 

She heard as he scoffed under his breath. “You’re one to talk, you weeb,” he muttered. He probably thought that she couldn’t hear that.

 

“I sent the link. Watch it in the morning, y-you need sleep just like the rest of us!”

 

“No offense to people who are sleep enthusiasts—which included myself until recently, now that I think about it—but this might be a little more important than sleep is, Alphys.”

 

“What?” She felt her mind catching up with him finally, and she felt wide awake. “What happened?”

 

“They’re jumping.”

 

It felt like cold water was trickling down between her shoulder blades. Her jaw went tight. “Are they s-still jumping? A-As in, currently?”

 

“No, but there was a series of three… wait…” A long pause. “Four. Three? Wait—god damn it—It’s hard to see, there’s like three parabolas layered on each other. The kid’s jumped a few different times, all of them about four hours ago. Now I need to see why.”

 

“W-wait, slow down.” Her head was spinning. “I thought you knew when these happened!”

 

“I was asleep until about three hours ago and I just now saw this. I can’t tell if they happen while I’m sleeping, can I?” he said. “I’m watching the video now. If you click on it too for me…”

 

She did so. The image was low quality, and the video seemed to be dropping frame rate occasionally. A sigh came from the other end of the line. “Good enough I guess,” he muttered. They watched as Mettaton activated the tile puzzle, singing obnoxiously all the while. They watched as Frisk dashed across the tiles, feet skidding on slippery floor, splashing on water, cantered across pink squares happily. But not fast enough. The flames closed in, and Sans hissed a curse under his breath. “No way.” But the kid looked only mildly annoyed, not even a bit scared as the flames bore down on them—

 

And stopped in their tracks for several seconds before, finally, Alphys had them get shut off. The flames flickered out.

 

Sans sighed. “There it is. Kid knew that Mettaton would stop the fire before it got them, I guess. But they must’ve really wanted to do that tile puzzle right, huh? For a bit there I thought that maybe…”

 

Alphys listened carefully, but he didn’t seem like he was about to start talking again. “What?” she prodded, voice cautious.

 

“…I thought the kid died,” he said after a moment. “Came back. Y’know. Or… hurt someone by mistake or something, but… They just really wanted to see if they could win I guess.” The kid attacked, Mettaton fled, the kid seemed tired. The show went on break.

 

He still sounded shaken up, but Alphys could tell that he wasn’t ready to talk about it. “Well now that you know, p-promise me you’ll get some sleep,” she said finally. “If you need anything else, go ahead and call, b-but… really, go to bed. You sound really tired.”

 

“I know, I know, just…” She heard him inhale, exhale, inhale, and the final time the exhale was less shaky than before. “Yeah. G’night.”

 

“Night,” she replied carefully, hesitating before she hung up her phone. She took half an hour to fall asleep that night. Way out in the cold, empty lab in Snowdin, Sans didn’t sleep that night at all, period. Not because of nightmares (vines or strings of code tearing him to pieces, melding his bones and cracking his skull and a flash of silver and red and red and red and dust), but because he and Alphys both knew what had to happen next.

 

Because they both knew the rules. Only a human _and_ a monster soul together could cross the barrier. If the kid made it through the Core…

 

Sans would convince them. They needed to stop _now._

 

* * *

 

 

He saw the kid approaching and stood up straight, awareness reattaching itself to his face. Frisk seemed a little stronger now. Maybe they’d taken a nap. He wasn’t sure.

 

The kid stopped to read a slip of paper laying on the ground before looking back up at Sans. They walked over, a smile crossing their face.

 

“Hey,” he said when they approached. “I heard you’re going to the Core. How about grabbing some dinner with me first?” A happy nod. Sans grinned right back. “Great, thanks for treating me,” he joked, and Frisk elbowed him good-naturedly, rolling their eyes. He chuckled, nodding to one side. “C’mere, I know a shortcut.”

 

The crack was wide enough here to pull Frisk through as well, although he jolted them slightly unnecessarily for good measure. They looked surprised as they were suddenly standing in the fancy dining area of the hotel and resort. Sans stood opposite Frisk at the table (he hadn’t technically reserved the table, let alone the chairs). “Well, here we are,” he said coolly. Frisk looked like they wanted to ask a question, but decided against it.

 

There was a pause of silence as they stood there. “So,” he said, finally. “Your journey’s almost over, huh?”

 

Frisk looked down at the table, and suddenly Sans realized just how young they were. They’d made it so far. This little kid, probably with a family somewhere back home… a place where they were happy once, that they got stolen right out from under their feet—literally—as they fell into a society full of monsters.

 

“You must really wanna go home,” he said softly. His own eyes fell to the tabletop as well. “Hey, I know the feeling, buddo,” he said, voice trying for humor, but his expression didn’t quite agree. Frisk was looking at him now, studying his expression, trying to find meaning in his words. “Though… maybe sometimes it’s better to take what’s given to you.” He had a job as a sentry, a house, his brother… he was glad he took the job as opposed to giving up entirely, but… he felt that lingering seed of bitterness at the lot in life he had been given. But at least the kid had been given a good alternative to going home. He couldn’t hate them for wanting to go home to the Surface, but… “Down here you’ve got food, drink…” His eyes flickered upwards. “Friends…” A flash of… something crossed Frisk’s face. “Is what you have to do… really worth it?”

 

Frisk’s face shifted into confusion, a kind of sympathy and sadness in their face. He turned away entirely, eyes on the ground, breathing in, breathing out. He looked back up at them, but there it was. A kind of determination he’d never quite seen before. “Ah, forget it,” he said lightheartedly. “I’m rootin’ for you, kid.” He turned again, and Frisk shifted on their feet. The silence that fell made him feel on edge, like any second now the questions would come. And although he tried, he couldn’t keep dodging them forever.

 

“Hey. Let me tell you a story,” he said.

 

He found himself talking. Frisk was a good listener, didn’t ever interrupt him, or turn their attention elsewhere. He spoke with a kind of ease, just letting the words spill forth in a big, jumbling mess. Frisk perked up when hearing about the door, and again about the woman’s voice, and rolled their eyes at the knock-knock jokes. He told them about the promise he’d made. They looked surprised, grateful, melancholy, remembering something, something fresh in their mind. He recognized that expression, he’d seen it in the mirror a thousand times. Maybe they’d met her—the woman behind the door, the first person he could really bring happiness to after such a long time. After all, that door _is_ where they’d come from. He felt bitter for a long moment.

 

“You know what would’ve happened if she hadn’t said anything?” he said finally. There was a long pause, and he remembered just how angry, how afraid, how guarded he had been that night in the lab, staring down that monitor. “Buddy,” he said, and his voice held no humor. His eyes fell to the ground, and he felt guilt surge through him. He repressed it, knowing that he wouldn’t go back on a promise now. But he spoke regardless. His voice seemed to echo through the nearly empty room. _“You’d be dead where you stand.”_

 

He looked back up, and he saw that Frisk was afraid. Instant panic caused him to backpedal. “Hey, lighten up, bucko,” he said quickly. “I’m just joking with you! Besides, haven’t I done a great job protecting you? I mean, look at yourself. You haven’t died a single time!”

 

And he was joking. He really, truly was joking and kidding and trying to get a laugh or an eyeroll or anything at all but Frisk went terribly, horribly…

 

Still.

 

Their face was blank, and they seemed to be trying to project an impassive, stony, stoic expression. He felt his heart dropping to his feet, and if monster food would’ve allowed it, he might’ve felt like vomiting. “…Hey, what’s that look supposed to mean?” he asked finally, and Frisk glanced down at the table, fiddling with their sleeves. “Am I wrong?” God, they’d died, hadn’t they? Was it when he was slacking off? Had he missed something? Had they been in a fight and… and… “Heh.” It was weak, and they both knew it was weak, and he couldn’t stand there anymore, he had to leave, he couldn’t look Frisk in the eyes after failing them like this. He’d sworn to keep them safe. He’d promised. He had _promised._

 

But he couldn’t just leave them without saying bye first, that looked suspicious. “Well, that’s all,” he said lamely, turning to look at Frisk again. “Take care of yourself, kid. Because someone really cares about you.” Someone? Half the Underground adored Frisk by now, and for good reason. He walked away, disappearing, and even as he was back in Snowdin, standing in the snow, he still felt the sensation of crawling on his back where Frisk had been staring at him. Eyes scared. Eyes _terrified_ in a way a thousand flicks of fingers and waves of hands could never express.

 

He called Alphys. “They’re going in the Core,” he said the moment she picked up. “Can you keep watch over them?”

 

“U-um…” She cleared her throat. “I… I have a confession… Remember how I said I’d t-talk to Mettaton?”

 

“…Yeah?”

 

“We have a d-d-deal. It’s all… mostly staged. For dramatic effect. B-but… He’s, um, Mettaton. I’m not sure how things will go from here on out. H-he’s bad at coordination with this k-kind of thing.”

 

“Just keep an eye on the kid, okay?”

 

“S-sure thing. Bye.” She hung up. Sans walked into his room and tried to forget his worries. He didn’t.

 

* * *

 

 

He slept that night (how well he slept would be debatable). But when he woke up and walked downstairs, Papyrus and Frisk were in the kitchen and it appeared that Frisk was attempting to make pancakes.

 

Frisk looked at him. He looked at Frisk.

 

“Brother!” greeted Papyrus cheerfully. “The human has decided to ‘hang out’ in Snowdin for a while! Isn’t that neat? We’re going to do puzzles and build snow skeletons and be besties forever! Also Undyne will join our three-person friendship club since they are friends with Undyne now as well!”

 

Frisk nodded. They put down the spoon they were holding and their hands began moving. “Papyrus and I are going to go play in the snow, you should come with.” An olive branch, with a hint of choice, but there was no way in hell Sans could say no to Papyrus. He looked too happy for that.

 

“Sure,” he said with a shrug.

 

Frisk nodded again. “Pancakes first,” they signed quickly, picking back up the spoon and returning to stirring (with a ferocity that made him wonder if they’d ever spent a cooking lesson with Undyne, as the technique looked remarkably similar). After eating the (mildly mediocre but still pretty good) pancakes, he was dragged outside, Papyrus claiming that he was using all of his break times at once, since he’d never taken a break before.

 

He pulled the kid aside later that day as Frisk was trying to get Papyrus to make a good snow angel. “Kid, how’d everything go? You win?” He knew, of course, but he had to keep face here.

 

Frisk shrugged. “I got past the robot, and I think I made plenty of new friends,” they signed.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Yeah. I Mettaton.”

 

Sans couldn’t hold in the chuckle, and Frisk started smiling too. “Nice job, kid. I’m proud of you. How long are you planning on staying here?”

 

Frisk hesitated. “I just wanted to stop by. Say…” they paused. “Hello to a few of my friends. I thought that I’d try and make everyone a little happier before I go home.”

 

Sans would’ve dropped his smile if he wasn’t used to holding it. “You sure you still wanna leave?” he asked after a long moment. They looked around and Sans saw their eyes stop on Papyrus, who was flailing rather than waving his arms. Nevertheless, the snow angel was pretty good. They looked up at the sky and Sans saw the frown cross their face.

 

“I miss the sky being blue,” they signed simply, before they walked back to the taller of the two brothers, and Sans saw the wide, proud smile Papyrus wore as they commended his snow angel abilities.

 

Sans stood with his hands in his pockets for a long, quiet moment, thinking.

 

At least they would make his brother happy before they left. That’s the only thing Sans really had left that he cared about. Maybe he would regret this later, but he decided in that moment that this time, this last loop through, he would care. He would try again. He would keep the kid safe, he would make it without anyone getting hurt, and they would be free, and everyone would be happy.

 

One way or another, they would make it. No matter what.

 

He was filled with Determination.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Might drop an extra chapter this weekend if I can wrestle myself some time, in honor of the multiple winter holidays. I'm going through some stuff and my time management might suffer, but I'll try my best regardless! Anyways, to all of you celebrating now or in the near future, Happy Holidays! To y'all who don't celebrate anything in this, the most hectic of months, Happy December Free Time! Stay warm out there all of you who live in the colder areas, kudos and comments greatly appreciated, and have a wonderful week!]


	6. 73656c69676d616e6d61696572

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [i'm tired of editing this the guilt is killing me just, just take it, let me perish in peace, just take my 4000 words of trash children and leave me in peace]

 

Sans felt the nightmares beginning to pick up over the course of the next week (thistles, screamed laughter, dust, dust, dust, and a voice that never existed, the smell of sulfur). With the kid staying over at his house, he was practically forced to follow normal sleep patterns, so he couldn’t just sneak out and go avoid sleep like the plague as he had tended to do these days. The kid was a really _, really_ light sleeper, as shown by the time he’d tried to go down and work on the machine in his lab (guilt was eating him alive for not working on it for so long) and the kid had sat up and asked what he was doing, hands barely distinguishable in the dim light. He ended up making him and Frisk leftover spaghetti after a weak excuse of being hungry, then Papyrus had woken up and he was roped into a sort of midnight dinner followed by a movie marathon. To be fair, it was really fun and helped calm him back down, but he’d felt guilty the day after when both Papyrus and Frisk nearly crashed and burned they were so tired.

 

So he was stuck with trying to act like he was fine. He’s wake up in a cold sweat and pace for a few hours sometimes if the nightmares were really bad, but with someone else there in the house, his pride wouldn’t let him leave his room. If anyone else saw him like this…

 

He felt an ache in his ribcage and forced himself to lay back down before the tears came back. Nightmares, nightmares, nightmares, and every time he woke he would forget most of them, and every time he woke he would wonder if he had forgotten something.

 

Head in his hands, he would whisper the most important things to himself, driving them like a nail into his consciousness. The thought of forgetting everything that happened was enough to make him want to cry again. The responsibility of remembering everything fell to him, and he’d be damned if he forgot even a single second of it. “You worked in the lab. You worked with Gaster. You aren’t crazy. The kid isn’t as dangerous as you think they are. They’re alright, they’re just a child, you paranoid moron. You aren’t crazy. You’re Papyrus’s brother, and need to make sure he’s happy. Just keep your head up and play it cool. You aren’t crazy.”

 

Sometimes he forgot Gaster’s name and ended up not sleeping for the rest of the night.

 

Sans had the nightmares (thorns and laughter that cuts out like a glitch and falling falling falling _nothing_ , fading into the background and screaming and nothing). Frisk stuck around (snowmen and snowskeletons and snowball fights and ice skating and a warmer coat given by Papyrus and hot chocolate and cold). Papyrus smiled (laughing and cackling and swaggering and jumping and challenging and winning and losing on purpose and a wonderful, wide grin).

 

Papyrus always found extra blankets again from wherever it is they always disappeared to and draped them over the sleeping human laying on their couch by the end of the day. Sans would retreat upstairs and Papyrus would look relieved. Sans didn’t expect him to say “I’m glad you’re finally sleeping at home again” on the fourth day after the human began staying with them. He didn’t expect Papyrus to say “You’ve been smiling and trying really hard, I’m proud of you, Sans” after day eight. He didn’t expect to wake up one morning and for Papyrus to stop him, a hand on his shoulder, and for him to gently ask, “Sans, why do you think you’re crazy?”

 

He felt disappointed in himself as he heard his voice saying “It’s nothing, don’t worry about me.”

 

He felt disappointed in himself as he pretended that he’d slept at all that night.

 

He stopped reminding himself in the middle of the night. At least, out loud. Maybe it helped that one day he looked out the window and noticed that the snow outside was dotted with the silhouettes of a little snow army. For a moment, he allowed himself to think, childishly, that maybe they would protect their house during the night.

 

He slept.

 

* * *

 

 

He felt his paranoia seeping away.

 

The problem is, when you have someone living with you who cleans up after themselves, sometimes laughs at your really bad jokes, _and_ keeps your brother happy, you start to think they’re pretty cool. If they stay for a few weeks, you’re definitely calling them a good friend. Maybe best friend, if you’re Papyrus. Soon, he began getting used to having Undyne at their house as well, as any friend of Papyrus was a friend of Undyne, and Frisk had already proven to be the perfect third friend to balance out the two of them. With a kid around, Undyne smashed things a little less violently and slowed down enough for them to catch up. With their quiet attitude, they managed to tone down Papyrus’s naturally loud voice while also keeping him happy. They became a trifecta of terror, or do-gooding, or whatever it is that they felt up to that particular day.

 

They once spent a day smashing up all the snow-people and rebuilding them all. Undyne told Papyrus that it’s one of his allotted “Human study” days (a thing Sans is pretty sure she made up on the spot) in which he tried to get a better understanding for how humans work via super fun hangout sessions. He was pretty sure Papyrus saw through it, but he wasn’t going to turn down a day of hanging out with his new friend.

 

Sans would tag along occasionally, but Undyne and Papyrus were enough to exhaust his energy for social interaction very quickly. But sometimes, it was pretty fun just to watch. One day, Undyne came over and they all watched Mettaton’s cooking show on the couch. He and Frisk had claimed the floor though, as being trapped between Papyrus’s sharp edges and Undyne’s scratchy scales wasn’t the most fun thing in the world.

 

They had watched the show, Undyne and Papyrus with enthusiasm, Frisk with fascination, Sans poking fun at how over-the-top it was on rare occasions. Papyrus was quick to jump to Mettaton’s defense, so he dropped it about a quarter of the way through.

 

The show ended, Papyrus had declared that it was time for bed, Frisk had complained for a few minutes, and Papyrus (who was tricker than he seemed sometimes) had decided to bribe them with hot cocoa to go to sleep. They’d walked into the kitchen and Sans was left to say bye to Undyne, and then she would go home as well.

 

“Man, that kid is the best,” Undyne said happily as they observed the two fussing over the hot cocoa, pulling on her jacket. “To think I wanted to shish-kebob them not a month ago. Good times!”

 

“Yeah. I think we need to teach the kid some self-preservation. Seems like they only ever make friends with the people who are the most dangerous to their safety,” Sans chuckled, glancing over his shoulder at the two of them.

 

“Ha! I can see Papyrus and I, but what about you? I’m Captain of the Royal Guard, and Papyrus is no scrub in combat, but what exactly is your signature move, couch potato?” she’d said, trying her hardest to noogie him affectionately (or slightly less aggressively, which proved to still be really aggressive). He appreciated the effort as he dodged easily.

 

“Ah, I’ve been told my jokes are a form of torture in some cultures,” he said. “But other than that, I guess I’m the exception to the rule, huh?” Nothing new there.

 

“Yeah. I’m happy Papyrus is finally making new friends. Even if it’s technically going against everything I have ever taught him. Well, everything that I ever taught myself too, I guess,” she thought this over for a few seconds. “Oh well! Papyrus is happy, so I’m happy.”

 

“Same here. That’s all that matters,,” Sans said. He watched as Frisk turned on the stove and began boiling water, Papyrus watching curiously and waiting for the bubbles to appear. Frisk had to stop him from adding in spaghetti noodles. “It’s just… I’ve always taken care of him, kept him out of trouble, y’know? He can be too nice for his own good sometimes, and not everyone is nice enough to pass up a chance to mess with him. I’m glad to have someone else looking out for him too. It makes it a lot easier for me and him both.”

 

“Frisk? Hah, that kid’s taking care of _both_ of you, in case you didn’t notice,” Undyne said, rolling her eyes.

 

“I guess they are. I know he can take care of himself too, don’t get me wrong, but… I don’t know. I just… if anything ever happened to him because I wasn’t careful, I could never forgive myself. He means the world to me.”

 

“I know he does,” Undyne said. “You know, I can help keep him safe too. With me and Frisk combined, he doesn’t need you protecting him anymore. You can just be his brother now.”

 

The thought made Sans think for a few long moments. “Yeah,” he said softly. “I guess you’re right.” Silence fell in the air between them. “Sorry, I’ve been talking your ear…fin…thing off here. I’ll let you go,” he said finally, moving to open the door. “Stay safe out there, gets icy at night,” he said as Undyne walked through the door, back to her wide grin.

 

“Bye Undyne! The human also says bye, but, you can’t hear them!” called Papyrus, making Undyne laugh and wave over her shoulder, walking out into the night. Sans watched for a few moments before he sighed, closing the door, his smile stuck in place, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

 

Sans felt a tug on his sleeve, and looked down to see Frisk, holding up a mug of hot chocolate. “Wow, nice job kid,” he said, his smile brightening slightly. “You do this all by yourself?”

 

Frisk shook their head, pointing at Papyrus, who was also holding a mug of his own, looking proud. “I held them up so they could reach the sink!” he said happily.

 

“Way to go, Pap,” Sans said sincerely. Frisk was still holding up the mug at him. “Looks delicious, kid.”

 

Frisk shook their head impatiently. “Yours,” they signed simply with their free hand.

 

Sans took the mug carefully, visibly relaxing and realized this is precisely what Undyne meant. This kid was watching after him and Papyrus both, in a way. They toned down Papyrus, lifted up him.

 

“Thanks,” he said softly. He looked up at his brother. “Hey, Pap, I’m going to bed. Make sure you get this toddler to sleep at a reasonable hour, alright?”

 

Frisk began protesting being called a toddler (“I am _almost_ nine, I am _not_ a toddler!”), Papyrus agreed to watch their toddler (“What, not you too!”), and Sans retreated into his room for the night.

 

Papyrus didn’t need to be protected anymore. The thought made Sans’ heart ache. If he wasn’t protecting his brother, keeping him on his feet… what was the _point_ of having Sans around? To go drive Grillby into debt some more with the tab he refused to pay off and irritate everyone around him?

 

He had nightmares that night as usual (a pile of dust and cold and the sound of water and tattered red and no point anymore, no point anymore).

 

He slept.

 

* * *

 

 

“Hey kid,” Sans said. “Wanna see something cool?”

 

Frisk looked over from where they were sitting on the couch, turning their attention from the television, watching (guess who?) the robot who took up essentially every television spot there was. Mettaton’s show(s) had also taken the spot of “thing that both Frisk and Papyrus would watch for hours if they could”. Those two had watched it almost every night since Frisk started staying over—by now, approximately a month. Frisk had realized just what they’d missed out on by now, and they weren’t going to pass up another chance at friendship, or… maybe, if they were lucky, perhaps even family.

 

The thought of ‘family’ was foreign, but they felt a warmth in their chest at the idea. Frisk, by now, had decided that perhaps getting to the Surface could wait.

 

(Not like they had anyone to go home to anyways. Better these two kind skeletons than nobody at all.)

 

Speaking of skeletons, Frisk then noticed that Sans had his hand behind his back, somehow still seeming nonchalant. They watched curiously, head tilting in question. “You need to promise me first that you won’t tell Papyrus I have this until I give it to him, okay?” Sans said.

 

Frisk nodded.

 

Sans sat down next to them on the couch and with great flourish, pulled out…

 

A book?

 

Frisk stared blankly at it for several long moments, before looking back up at him. “I give up. What is it?” they signed.

 

Sans opened the book to the first page, and inside, pictures and drawings were pasted in carefully and meticulously, with small captions written underneath some of them. Frisk leaned in, eyes narrowing as they looked at it. They recognized Papyrus there in one picture, looking even younger than Frisk, hands outstretched towards the camera. His shirt hung off his frame awkwardly, but the stripes of red and orange seemed to suit him.

 

“Check it out, this is back when Pap was… maybe three, four? God, he’s at least quadrupled in size by now,” Sans said with a broad smile. “Wait, look at this one—“ It was a scribbled drawing, and after a moment Frisk could recognize the shape of a knight. “He loves when I tell him stories, and this one time I made up one about the Royal Guards, and he drew nothing but pictures of the story for months. Maybe it’s what started his whole Royal Guard shtick. This was back before we moved here, too. Good times back in the city.”

 

Frisk looked up at Sans, and was shocked to see… a genuine, vulnerable, open happiness there. His smile, for the first time since Frisk met Sans, seemed… entirely real.

 

They looked closely at the pictures there for several long moments before Frisk slowly, gingerly, turned the page.

 

More pictures of Papyrus. More drawings. More pages. The drawings grew more legible, Papyrus grew taller slowly but steadily. Some younger monsters Frisk didn’t recognize stood with him in some pictures. And there, Papyrus around age twelve, was an older looking skeleton, perhaps aged about twenty or so, who Frisk didn’t recognize. They looked up at Sans and saw the white points of light in his eyes drift over the page and land on the picture. His face hardened, his smile forced again. Frisk pointed a finger at the skeleton in the picture, curious.

 

“His name is…” Sans stopped for a long moment. “His name was Dr. W. D. Gaster.”

 

Frisk didn’t look back down at the book still, and Sans cleared his throat softly. “He… I don’t know who he was.” Frisk’s eyebrows disappeared under their bangs. “No, wait, no, I mean… I think… he was related to me or Papyrus somehow. One day he…” Sans’s head dipped, and his expression grew tight. “Left, and everybody forgot who he was but me. And I only remember a little bit. I… I just know that I miss him a lot. I think Papyrus does too, but… he doesn’t remember Doc much.” Sans stopped, swiped a palm across his cheek hastily and turned the page. “Anyways.”

 

Eventually, Sans began popping up in pictures. The first he was in was captioned “Papyrus is finally taller than Sans”. In it, there was a picture of Papyrus and a younger, livelier and more alert looking Sans, who seemed to be positively beaming as he and Papyrus stood back to back. Over the next dozen or so pages, Papyrus looked like he was well into his teens, and his height jumped nearly an inch between each picture. Pictures of a beautiful city, of them in Waterfall, of Sans and Papyrus standing at the door leading into the Core with smiles on their faces. “Opened for business!” it read. Occasionally there were pictures of this Gaster fellow. He looked like if you put Sans in a taffy puller, with thinner shoulders and arms that seemed to stretch on forever, each finger twice the length of his palms, like straws in a weird way. A lab coat, pristine and bright white, draped over his shoulders like a sheet.

 

A picture of Sans and Papyrus, Sans holding up a full bottle of something in the air triumphantly, Papyrus looking mildly miffed at the other side of the table. A cake lay on the tabletop, already nearly demolished, and wrapping paper covered the area. The caption simply said “Sans can legally drink. Papyrus is unimpressed.” The one directly underneath was a picture of Papyrus giving a thumbs-up while standing beside a dreary-eyed, scowling Sans. Frisk realized they’d never seen Sans stop smiling before. It was amusing. The caption read “Day after: Sans swears off drinking for the rest of time. Papyrus is entertained.”

 

In most pictures Sans was in some kind of hoodie, but there was one of Papyrus, a bag on his shoulders, the two other skeletons flanking him, in which he wasn’t. By then, Papyrus was at least two heads taller than Sans, but somehow, Gaster still towered over them. Frisk studied the picture for several long moments. Sans was wearing a lab coat too now, and had a bag slung over his shoulder. It looked a lot like someone about to go to work. They read the caption.

 

“Pap’s first day of his last year at school. W. D. almost cried. Sans finally got the funding and rights.”

 

And they all seemed happy. With a jolt, Frisk realized they were nearly through the book and had been sitting there for almost an hour.

 

A few more pages. A picture of Sans and a few other monsters Frisk didn’t recognize. “The team” were the only words below the large photograph that took up one whole page. Frisk saw Gaster in the small crowd, and their eyes raked the people on the page, stopping suddenly when…

 

They pointed at one figure. Sans squinted at the person. “Oh. Yeah, that’s Alphys. This was back before she got her new glasses, back then she had these little square ones—they looked good, but, the ones she has now are really nice too. Either way, it suits her. I can’t pull off glasses, don’t even have any ears to rest them on.”

 

The page turned. Sans tried to flip past it, but Frisk stopped him, laying a small hand on the page. Their eyes fell on Sans posing with several monsters that looked familiar, but also entirely foreign. Captions read; “Back on their feet!” “Already back to playing fetch.” “Ready to be back home!”

 

Sans turned the page, grin still in place, but his eyes made him seem stony, his shoulders stiff. There were five pictures there. Each picture looked like it was taken a long time apart from the others. The first was a picture of the house at Snowdin. “The new place” it read. The second was Papyrus by the guard station, posing dramatically with a slightly younger Doggo, Dogamy, and Dogaressa. He looked at least half a foot taller than in the previous picture. It appeared that some time had passed. One slightly blurry picture of Undyne sitting in front of a cake, Papyrus standing beside her, the cake shaped like a shield. Both were smiling at the camera, Undyne with many more teeth than were completely necessary. This picture seemed to be a few months after the one previous. The caption read, “Undyne’s B-Day, she really liked the cake.”

 

The right side of the page held two pictures. One was a picture of Papyrus holding a box containing a few action figures, grinning happily. “Santa strikes again” was written below it. The last thing on the page was a drawing of a rectangular Mettaton that, while not incredibly good, still clearly held a lot of heart. “Papyrus’s new favorite show”.

 

Frisk turned the page carefully and looked at the next. It was blank. They turned the last several pages and found all of them blank as well. They looked up at Sans quizzically.

 

“I’ve gotta paste in the last few, but… well, there’s room for one last picture on the last page, no matter how I arrange them. I don’t know what to put there though. I was hoping that I could get all of our friends together and we could take one as a group, have that be the last one. I’m going to give it to him when I’m done with it,” Sans said, closing it again.

 

“Why?” signed Frisk, who by now was feeling puzzled.

 

“I just… I miss good memories,” Sans said, eyes finding the floor. “As long as I hang on to this, I don’t think I’ll be making many more. I need to start trying to make new ones, y’know? As long as I hold onto the past, can’t really enjoy the present. I mean, there’s some stuff I still need from the past, but… I need to move on eventually… does that make sense? Maybe not. You get my point.” He paused. “Kid, I have a confession to make here.”

 

Frisk nodded, their hair waving gently around their face.

 

“I know about the reloads.” A beat of silence, a beat of comprehension. Frisk recoiled on the couch, small, innocent eyes widening with fear and guilt. All this time Sans had known? All this time they’d been jumping around for puzzles and popping back up after battles gone wrong and Sans had _known_ the entire time? Guilt rose like bile in their throat. “Wait, wait, kid, listen hear me out. I know about them. I remember them. And I just wanted to tell you…” He looked Frisk in the eye now. “I’m so, so proud of you for not taking advantage of this… this time stuff.”

 

Frisk relaxed, wondering how to even begin apologizing for this. “But… I’m scared,” Sans admitted. Frisk frowned. “I’m scared that you’ll try and fix _everything_ if it doesn’t turn out perfect, that one thing will annoy you and that you’ll send us all through it all over again, and…” Sans swallowed hard, his head dipping slightly. “Can you just promise me that whatever happens… only reset to—to come back, alright? Only to come back. No matter what, only reset if… you need to to come back to us. Can you promise me?”

 

Frisk nodded once, solemnly, gripping Sans’s bony hand in their own. Sans met their eyes finally and his smile suddenly seemed more relaxed. “Thank you,” he said softly. He stood up, looking lost for a long moment before tucking the book inside a cabinet by the door. He paused for another moment, looking over at Frisk. He stood a little taller, shoulders relaxing ever so slightly. ”I’m sorry for dumping all of this on you, I know it’s a lot, but… hey, always hold on to memories. They’re the best thing you have. And, um, one last thing. Papyrus really likes his bedtime stories, so, if I’m ever not home to do it, could you be a pal and read him one for me?” Frisk only nodded, a bit confused by the request. “And… man, talking a lot, I know, but, Papyrus needs someone looking after him sometimes, so, whenever I’m not around—um, like, when you two go and hang out, I mean—“ his voice sounded odd, Frisk felt a little uneasy. “Just… watch after my brother, okay? That’s all.”

 

Frisk’s hands moved slowly, hesitantly. “I will. I promise.” Why did they feel so uneasy as Sans nodded at them? “I’m trying to be the best friend he could ever want!”

 

Sans smiled, but it seemed a little hollow. “I believe in you,” he said, voice soft (why was his voice so soft now?), taking a deep, slow breath. “Welp, I’m going to Grillby’s,” he said finally with a shrug, before he walked calmly out of the door, slowly out the door, eyes drinking in the floor in front of him. Frisk heard the sound of Papyrus’s voice outside, saying something they couldn’t make out. They did, however, hear Sans.

 

“Papyrus, do you want anything?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [I'm adding on a couple of tags both for already posted and future chapters now, just because I know I'm going to forget later. Have a great day you lovely person reading this, feedback appreciated, and...well, I'm currently deciding if shipping is a thing I want to do in this fic. If I do, it won't be very plot-centric, but I'm just thinking about if it would really add anything to the story. Undyne and Alphys is obviously going to be mentioned a bit, and Mettaton's showing up later, he's a walking flirt, but otherwise... not sure. If any of y'all have a verdict on that, let me know what you'd want to see happening! Have a cool day.]


	7. v(f)=(9.8m/s^2)*t

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [I'll try and get the next chapter out by this weekend, but meanwhile, uh... strap in. This is... this is certainly a chapter.]

 

Papyrus and Frisk waited up for Sans at lunchtime that day (spaghetti, because what else would Papyrus ever make after Sans had told him he loved it so much?). Papyrus and Frisk waited up for him at dinner that day too (Frisk helped Papyrus make it, leftovers were great and all but fresh pasta was always much more satisfying). They even waited up before bedtime came around (Where is Sans? Where is Sans? They both asked it in their minds but never out loud, because then it would seem like he had gone missing, rather than just disappearing for a little bit like he had always done back before Frisk had come to town). Papyrus walked to Grillby’s just as the bartender was closing up shop for the night, asking if Sans had been there today. Grillby had simply shaken his head no.

 

Meaning that Sans hadn’t been there since the day before.

 

Papyrus felt a sort of apprehension as night rolled around. He thought Sans had been doing _better._ He hadn’t disappeared for a whole day like this in a long time. It was worrying, it was troublesome, and quite frankly, Papyrus didn’t know what to do about it. He knew that every time Sans just up and left, he always stopped at Grillby’s at least once. The fact that he hadn’t, coupled with how it had been at least a solid month since he had done this, made Papyrus uneasy. He knew he shouldn’t worry, his brother could definitely take care of himself, he was incredibly competent when need arose despite his lazy tendencies. But he knew that Frisk had no idea about Sans’s random running off, nor any of his other friends. It had always just been a Sans thing that Papyrus knew better than to ask about. But now Frisk would worry too, and so would the others if they brought it up, and Papyrus hated the very idea of the small human of any of their mutual friends being unhappy about anything.

 

Papyrus went to his room, hoping beyond hope that his brother would be home by the time he woke up. If Sans came back by morning, maybe Frisk wouldn’t worry. Maybe everything would be okay again. Sans probably just… had something to do. Maybe he just wanted to go and… mess with his telescope? Yeah, that sounded like a thing that might be true. He always loved that thing, and Papyrus had found Sans there more than once when he went to hang out in Waterfall with Undyne. It couldn’t be that bad, right? Sans is fine. What was he even worried about? Sans _always_ came back. Always.

 

But somewhere deep in his ribcage, he felt that something was wrong, the very marrow of his bones chilled in dread despite the warm blankets piled on top of him.

 

He was surprised as he heard a small knock on his door (not the sound of bone on wood, but a small hand). Frisk entered, looking pretty nervous themselves. The light from the hall allowed Papyrus to make out what they were saying.

 

“Sans told me that you always like having a bedtime story and that if he couldn’t do it, then I should do it instead,” they signed slowly enough for Papyrus to read.

 

Papyrus hadn’t admitted to wanting a bedtime story since he was a babybones, back when they both lived at the capital. Despite that, in the times since then, Sans still occasionally leaned against the wall, his low voice murmuring stories he either made up on the spot or stories he’d memorized, the books they belonged to still in Papyrus’s possession, covers worn and tattered from years of use. He still slept best after hearing a bedtime story, although by now he realized he was probably too old to need one. But he didn’t need to ask. Sans just knew sometimes.

 

Frisk walked into his room cautiously, trying not to trip over anything in the near-darkness, picking up a book from the rest of them that Sans knew line for line and could recite from memory. And to the complete shock of Papyrus, they began reading aloud in a soft, underused voice, a story about a rabbit who got lost and found her way back home.

 

The next morning when he woke up, his house was empty, the atmosphere of their usually homely home turned foreboding. Frisk had gone to talk to Alphys and Undyne to see if they knew where Sans was, according to the note they’d left on the table (their handwriting was blocky and childlike, matching Frisk to a T). By habit, he found himself walking out into the forest towards his sentry station. Along the way, he cast his gaze over everyone he passed, looking for any sign of his brother. Anything at all.

 

He stood at the bridge by where he’d first been introduced to Frisk, the first human he’d ever met in his life. Everything was silent there. He felt the marrow of his bones beginning to run cold. This was the last place he would ever find Sans if he went looking. If he didn’t find him here, he either didn’t want to be found, or…

 

Or…

 

“Sans!” he called warily, voice reverberating in the trees around him. “Sans, where are you!? Are you here!? Brother! _Sans!”_

 

He yelled and yelled, his voice rising, petering out, and he sat in the snow, eyes trained on the ground, voice going silent. The last echoes faded through the woods around him, silence falling, and he wished beyond hope for his brother to walk from behind a tree and tell a stupid, terrible joke. The last echoes died, and he called out one last time in desperation, in fear, because this time was different than all the other ones. This time, he felt deep in his chest that he needed to find his brother, he needed Sans to come back, and he needed to come back _now_.

 

And so he yelled as loudly as he could, loud enough that his hearing filled with ringing, loud enough that his voice felt like it was being ripped into shreds and burned away, loud enough that it seemed as if the snow sitting in the trees would be shaken loose from the bare, bone-like branches—

 

**_“SANS!”_ **

_But nobody came._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

The bubbling of magma far, far below made a glorious background noise for his thoughts. It was warm here, sweltering some would say, enough so that he pulled off his trademark jacket and laid it to one side. His eyes were closed, and he desperately tried to find any memory of the man who spoke in hands. An imprint of an imprint of an imprint. Anything at all.

 

Here, above the Core, on this ledge that could only be found by accident (unless you’d been there before), here was the point in space where Gaster was closest to existence. Sans opened his eyes and for a moment could smell the faintest trace of sulfur. He relaxed. Although some would say it was rude to talk about someone who was listening, he could protest that Gaster was the type who only paid attention to people who had caught it.

 

By the way the air suddenly felt heavier, bearing like a great weight upon his shoulders, it looked like he had his attention.

 

“I’m sorry, W. D.,” he began softly, voice grating and dry from the smoke in the air. “I can’t get the machine working. It’s broken beyond repair, and I think I finally figured out what’s wrong.” He looked at his shoes, broken down from years of wear and tear. He’d held onto them since before Snowdin, at the very earliest. The soles of them had nearly broken down by now (much like his own. Irony is the highest form of comedy, in his book, and since puns are a form of irony, then he must be a comedic master. What a turn of events his life was, huh?). “This machine, this attempt to reverse everything that’s happened to us, this attempt at not just distorting time-space, but _reversing the flow_ —was invented by you from the bottom up. Anyone who took high school physics knows that to distort time, all you need is high speeds, but you figured out how to _reverse_ time. You had the formula, you had the blueprints. When you left, the formula was gone, and all I had was how to build it. And when I did I found that each piece was encoded with who you were. Every screw and nut and bolt and inkling of iron is _you_. And you never technically existed.” He laughed humorlessly. “So it _can’t_ work. Not without you. Real philosophy puzzle you left me here, huh Doc? If I hadn’t taken three courses in it, it might’ve just stumped me, but it looks like I finally passed one of your challenges. About time, right, G?” Nobody replied. Sans hadn’t expected to hear one, either.

 

The fumes of the magma burning and melting and solidifying and warping weren’t that bad down below. But here, at one of the highest standing points of the cavern, they threatened to suffocate him if he wasn’t taking nice, deep breaths. “I tried my best, you know that. But I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep acting like you weren’t there. I can’t keep lying about… about everything that’s happened. I can’t keep pretending that you just _left_ one day, when I know… I know that…” He swallowed the lump in his throat. Remember those nice, deep breaths, Sans. “I thought I could move on, grow, rebuild. But I can’t. It’s meaningless as long as _anyone_ has the power to take it back. So… I’m coming in after you.” He felt sweat on his brow, on his hands. “Two skulls are better than one, right Doc? If I go in the same way you did, I could _find_ you. Now that I know that… Papyrus has someone to fall back on, I think it’s worth a shot, don’t you?” The air felt heavy. He was unsure if that was a good sign or not. “This is where you disappeared. I know it is. I don’t know how or why, but this was the end of the line for you. I… I don’t know where you went. Of even if you’re still there. I don’t know how you got there. But it’s all in the theory. Just like you always said back in the lab, theory is everything. I have my theory, and it adds up, and as far as I can tell, this is my only chance at proof. I have to find you. I have to get you back, and this is the last way I know how. I have no other choice now. This is the last option I have.”

 

“You could always give up.”

 

Sans spun on his heel, shoulders tightening, eyes falling to look at a golden flower on the ground, smiling up at him. “Who… no, _what_ are you?” he demanded.

 

“Howdy! I’m Flowey! Flowey the flower!” he replied chipperly, voice projecting only a kindness and friendliness, the most trustworthy type of voice anyone could ever have. He barely ducked underground in time as bones erupted into life around him and tried to cut him to ribbons, and he sprouted up a few yards away looking irritated. “Hey, easy, easy!” he snarled. “What’re you attacking me for?”

 

“Thorns and vines and thistles and dust,” Sans said, eye glowing spectacularly, his pupils gone. “You’re the anomaly. The _real_ one.”

 

Flowey looked taken aback for a long moment by how unsurprised Sans seemed, but then he returned to smiling. “Ha! So you remember me. I expected nothing less from you, Sans. Not after all those times you _killed_ me and I had to reset again. Oh wait, you don’t remember resets if the person controlling them dies! How funny!” He yelped, hardly dodging in time as he was bombarded with attacks. “Watch it! You might make me mad!” he threatened.

 

“Tell me this then, you weed,” Sans said darkly. “How many times have you killed me, huh?”

 

Flowey grinned with too many teeth. “Dozens!”

 

“Liar.”

 

Flowey howled in pain as he was struck with the force of a blinding white laser. “Just hear me out, you hellbeast!” he said angrily. “I might not be able to kill you, but I can still kill your brother or the human!”

 

Sans’s power flickered in and out for a moment, but he said nothing, still poised to attack again. Perfect. Now that he had this… _thing_ here, his plan was working. He hoped he wouldn’t have to improvise as much as he thought he would. Just follow your plan. Just stick to the _plan._ Now was “Flowey’s” turn.

 

Flowey huffed, looking satisfied when Sans didn’t attack. “Good. Now, I just wanted to tell you that what you’re about to do? It _won’t work_.” Sans’s hand twitched and Flowey flinched slightly, looking a little nervous. “Just listen! It won’t work because he didn’t just _jump_ into the Core. That’s not how it happened.”

 

“How did it happen then?” He didn’t want to know, but he had to know. He didn’t trust this flower, but he had no choice.

 

“Well,” Flowey said, and his face seemed to melt away, sprouting eye sockets that were too familiar, cracked by temporal forces, and Sans felt like his chest had been hit by a baseball bat. “First, I ripped him to shreds, and the dust all fell into the Core of its own volition. Then, just as his soul was about to shatter in a million tiny little pieces, I threw it into the Core with the rest of him, where instead of shattering, the magic seeping through it absorbed him and dissolved the concept of him while superheating and fusing him into the concept of nothingness itself.”

 

Sans couldn’t show just how much that hurt to hear. Not in front of this abomination. “Really? That’s what really happened to him? Hah. Wouldn’t even surprise me to hear that, **you dirty brother killer**.” His voice was level, he was proud to say, even as it echoed dangerously through the cavern.

 

Flowey stared at him for a long moment before he huffed angrily. “No, not really. I thought that would get more of a rise out of you,” he admitted, muttering bitterly.

 

“Hmm. Guess it’s hard to get under my skin if I don’t have any,” Sans said (hiding behind your humor like always, you coward. He felt guilt clawing at him from the inside).

 

“I lied. He just jumped,” Flowey said with a smirk. “Just a hop a skip and a jump right to his death to escape the crippling responsibility of his actions!”

 

Yeah, no, that was even worse. His eyes flickered to the drop again, and he wondered just how terrible of a person he had to have been to let this happen.

 

“I have a question for you,” he said finally, slowly. His pupils returned, and they bored into the golden-petaled demon in front of him. “Do you think even the worst person can change?”

 

Flowey shifted slightly, expression shifting between a wide range of emotions before finally settling on irritation. “What kind of stupid question is that?” he snapped, glaring daggers at the skeleton.

 

“Because, I’m beginning to wonder…” He laid a hand over his chest, and a blue radiance began peeking from beneath his collar. Flowey shrunk back, looking terrified. “If anyone could ever forgive me for this.” The small glow grew brighter, turning into shades of white. “This stupid personal vendetta of mine has taken up _years_ of my life now. And I was just starting to think maybe there was something I was missing, something I didn’t quite get. And I figured it out.”

 

Flowey shrunk back from the glow that seemed brighter than the legendary Sun, that was only ever seen in pictures of the Surface (the one thing Sans wanted to see over anything else in the world, incomprehensible amounts of energy just _there,_ and staying there for who knows how long). “I wondered if this entity was just angry or upset. If it just needed a hug and some laughs. But that’s not it, is it? You’re just a sick, twisted abomination that craves power. You just want to see everyone suffer. And you’ll _never be satisfied._ ” Flowey seemed to be steeling himself, squinting into the light pouring from the skeleton’s chest. “This Soul of mine is pretty bright, wouldn’t you say? I’m the only monster I’ve ever met that can do this trick. Bringing my Soul out to play when I’m not in battle. Weird, isn’t it? And as far as I can tell, you’ve never seen this before, even after all those resets. You probably know by now, it would take an awful lot to snuff me out. I’m guessing you think you have the Determination to take me on this time around, don’t you?” He took his hand from his chest and the light flickered off like a candle being blown out, leaving Flowey to stare in horror into two eye sockets that seemed to hold the void itself. “Well, I was betting on it. I know that it won’t just take me killing you anymore. _I need to destroy the concept of you._ ” His hand pulling from his pocket and flashing aglow, his pupil blazing again. “If a reset happens, you’ll come back, I know that. But I can destroy your very essence, and as long as nobody goes back to before that exact moment, it’s permanent. And it won’t just take me fighting you, will it? If I want to make sure you don’t come back, I’ll have to burn _with you_. A second Soul used as shrapnel to entirely destroy something soulless. And I think that if my theory proves right, it might just be enough.” And he hoped he was right, he prayed he was right, he _had_ to be right or he would just die here and now without fanfare and it would all be pointless, pointless, _pointless._

 

Flowey tried to think of something to say. “I’ve fought you before, and I’ll do it again!” he snapped, face turning as ugly as his attitude.

 

“I know. But this time, you don’t control resets anymore. My new little sibling does. And they made a promise to me. You never, ever go back on a promise, isn’t that right?” He knew that he could only push so far before he broke, but he wasn’t finished yet. “No more resets. Only if they die. And I’m pretty sure that if they made it this far, then today’s not the day Frisk will die.”

 

Flowey was terrified beyond reason, spiteful beyond hope, and so he bared his teeth in a mockery of a smile. “You’ve figured it out then, huh? What it takes to kill me? Well, guess what, you pathetic sniveling coward? You figure it out every time, and not _once_ have you had the courage to actually _do_ it!” And he was cackling and Sans just grinned, grinned, grinned. “You’re too weak to do it! We both know it! You’re too _moral_ and _righteous_ and all that _worthless_ noise! No matter what the cost!”

 

And Sans laughed. Flowey began trembling in fear and rage as he laughed, laughed, laughed. “You think all those times I was really trying to kill you?” he asked, looking amused beyond belief, and Flowey had begun to realize just what he’d gotten into. “It was never about _killing_ you. I’ve planned for every possible outcome. I only ever fought you to make you _bring them all back._ ” This was a dangerous bluff pulled together from careful study of the time loops, of his nightmares and how frequently they came, and he prayed, he prayed he was right.

 

Now Flowey tried a laugh, although it came out warped and twisted, like somebody was trying to recreate a laugh after only ever having heard a description of one. “Oh, of course! But you and I both know that you can’t just abandon ship, not even to kill me! You care too much about your brother and your friends for that, don’t you? You’re too weak! You and I _both know it!_ That’s all that ever comes from sentiment, more pain and resentment for everyone else involved! That’s all that will ever come from it!”

 

“You missed out on one thing, you weed,” Sans said, and his voice was even, and he felt for the first time since the lab like the weight of his guilt was finally gone. “ _I made my peace_. Papyrus has someone to watch out for him now, I’m all out of knock-knock jokes, and I know now that when I die, I’ll at least have the chance to find Gaster again.” And comprehension slid slowly into Flowey’s expression, but he glowed deep blue, held in place by the power he shared with his brother. “That’s right. Nobody left to miss me, everyone will be safe, and I’ll finally find W. D., so in other words, I have nothing to hold me back anymore. Three for three isn’t too damn bad, is it, you atrocity?” And he grinned, grinned, grinned. “I assume all those other times, you killed Papyrus, didn’t you? Well, that’s your first mistake.” His eye gleamed with unbidden power as he launched his attack, this time not just to frustrate him—but to _kill_. “ _I don’t have someone to save now_.”

 

* * *

 

 

“Yo, Alphys, over here! I think I found something!”

 

“D-Did you find him? P-Papyrus, I-I think she found him, come on!”

 

“I’ll carry the pipsqueak, it’s kind of hard to make the climb. Hold on, short stack!”

 

The three monsters and the child clambered onto the ledge, Papyrus leading the way, nearly falling in his haste. “Sans? Sans, are you up here?” he called out, looking over the ledge, voice sounding oddly hoarse for reasons he wouldn’t say.

 

“I-I saw his phone right over there by the ledge, I thought…” Undyne looked crestfallen, and Frisk’s face was still tight with worry from where they sat on her shoulders.

 

“W-wait… oh… oh my god…” Alphys clamped a hand over her mouth, eyes wide with horror as she looked out onto the ledge. “P-P-Papyrus, I… p-please take F-Frisk and… g-go wait over there,” she managed to stammer, and her voice shook in a way that sounded almost painful. She seemed to be on the verge of tears. Papyrus tried to say something, but his voice hardly managed the effort, cracking and falling away. He tried again.

 

“But I—“

 

“Papyrus. That’s an order,” Undyne said, feeling a bit bad about pulling out her rank on him like this. But Alphys looked horrified beyond words, and whatever had her that scared was too bad to show Papyrus.

 

Papyrus took Frisk’s hand and walked away, glancing back as he did warily, and Undyne walked to Alphys once he was out of view and earshot. “What?” she asked, on edge suddenly, voice taut with worry. “What is it?”

 

Alphys buried her face in her hands and pointed a shaky claw at the furthest point of the ledge, the farthest out that it hung over the Core. Undyne carefully walked closer, and her one eye not hidden by an eyepatch widened in abject horror.

 

There, sitting at the edge, was a pair of black sneakers, well-worn from use, the soles looking ready to give up any day now, clearly having been worn practically every day by their owner. And there, sitting beside those sneakers, was a faded, oversized, far-too-familiar blue jacket.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [I would say I'm sorry, but I'm totally not. Regret is for the weak.  
> Thanks for reading, feel free to scream at me via comments, and meanwhile try to have a good day despite my best efforts here. New chapter by this weekend (if I finish it, which will probably happen in time)!]  
> [Edit: yeah no this chapter is hellish might need to wait, sorry]


	8. Variable_F2.AwaitingInput

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Why is editing hell?]

 

Sans watched out the window, his pupils glowing so very faintly, a tiredness in the way he held himself. He looked (bone) tired, but still strong in a weird, backwards way. The same way a boulder under a waterfall was strong—not in that it would last forever, but in the way that it had lasted this far and knew it had time to kill. Outside the window, snow fell heavily, thick flakes sticking to the glass panes and frosting them with every sweep of wind. Perfect for packing snow, yet not even the most daring children of Snowdin would brave the harsh, biting, ripping cold that tore into them with talons if it so much as danced under the doorways. The slightest, thinnest draft sending shivers up their spines was warning enough that it was far too cold to go out and play.

 

Papyrus was nothing if not determined to do his job, however. He had left the house with piles of blankets and more than one full thermos of hot chocolate, coffee, tea, anything he could carry to warm his bones. Gloves over gloves, bundling like he was going to the Arctic itself (which wasn’t far from the truth), he marched into the snow outside that blotted out the ‘sun’.

 

He promised to be back, and for once didn’t blame Sans for not going to work that day, simply telling him to warm up some of the leftover spaghetti if he got hungry. It was too cold for a walk to Grillby’s, Papyrus knew. While Sans knew shortcuts out the wazoo to get where he wanted to go, there wasn’t a single one inside of the house. The closest one he could possibly get to was the one in his lab, but he would need to brave outside to get there. He’d have to rely on the monolith of leftover spaghetti for nutrition until it was warmer outside.

 

They didn’t have much food inside the house, usually. Papyrus was busy doing his job and chatting with locals and training with Undyne, so in the perfect world, responsibility would fall to Sans to get them both groceries. But he found that he just couldn’t bother, not when it was possible that the very next day he could wake up only to find that he had wasted his time, and they were gone, a reset taking away any effort he had put into shopping for food. It was easier to go to Grillby’s. Unchanging, unmoving, always-there Grillby’s where he could count on getting something to eat at any point in time if he wanted. Where it didn’t matter that nobody but him remembered a week passing and restarting, he could just eat a burger and drink ketchup and nothing mattered for a while.

 

Papyrus never asked why he only ever went to Grillby’s to eat. He had learned that asking about several of his brother’s more specific quirks only made him close off, shut down, disappear for the rest of the day into the woods maybe, which was bad, as he had learned a long time ago that if Sans didn’t want to be found, then he just plain wouldn’t be found. He was pretty good at that kind of thing—staying out of sight and mind when he just wanted some alone time. Papyrus never worried, though. Even if his brother was lazy and slept a large amount of the time he was supposed to be working, he could still handle himself just fine.

 

Sans had gotten out of bed at a pretty reasonable hour today, though. Waking up, something had seemed off to him, and when he looked out the window at what was essentially a blizzard, he knew that there was most definitely something _up._ Somehow, impossibly, there was a shift in the air pressure, something had happened in their smaller more condensed atmosphere to cause an outlier in the regular weather patterns. This snow. He had a bad feeling that somewhere, there was a _big_ change. He wasn’t sure where, or how, or why, but…

 

Wait a second…

 

No, nevermind, there goes the déjà vu again. He thought for a few moments, wondering why he couldn’t remember anything in particular about the last loop through. Usually he remembered almost immediately. He shrugged it off, walking to his pile of papers and sifting through, taking note of all the weird equations there now. He stared at them, trying to jog his memory. Nothing.

 

His eyes fell on the little scrapbook project he had nearly abandoned. It looked like it was done now, to his surprise. Maybe nothing new had happened but that? Sometimes mundane tasks just ended up slipping his mind. If all that he did in a loop was go to his job(s) and make a bad pun or two, he would forget entirely. But this was a little out of the blue, unprompted. He felt uneasy for a moment before shrugging it off and picking it up to see how he’d done. He saw how the last few pages were all pasted in now, although it looked pretty sloppy. He cursed his past self mentally (he liked referring to the versions of him that happened in other loops as past selves, and other monsters as alternate selves, because memory is the key), eyes drifting over the page and flipping to the very back.

 

He stared at the picture there, eyes narrowing, eyes widening, eyes tearing up, scream building in his chest and deflating almost instantly as he felt like he was being slowly crushed under a great and heavy weight.

 

* * *

 

 

He remembered Frisk, he remembered snowmen, he remembered pancakes and hot chocolate and the scrapbook and… and…

 

There was _more,_ there was _more_ but he couldn’t _remember it._

 

He wanted to scream. He wanted to cry. He wanted to shout at the top of his lungs but he didn’t have any and it would be a waste of time anyways, wouldn’t it, because damn it if he hadn’t seen this coming. He’d seen this coming and it _hurts._

 

He wanted to scream. He wanted to say anything at all. He wanted to hunt down Frisk and look them in their stupid squinty eyes and scream at the top of his lungs that they had _promised._

 

He wanted to scream. He felt the tears coming and he couldn’t stop them. He bundled himself in his blankets and tried to quell the tears.

 

Frisk had _promised._

_He wanted to scream._

 

* * *

 

 

Sans was back in his lab again, staring at the jump. Months of time. _Months of time_ had been thrown away. He had died for nothing, it looked like. The pinpricks making up his pupils were faded, dimming. He tried not to stare at the picture in his hand and failed.

 

He expected to see Papyrus there. If nobody else, then Papyrus. Frisk he figured was to be expected. He could even imagine Undyne. He didn’t expect to see Alphys, and Grillby, and all the dogs making up the guard, and several monsters from Snowdin and a few others he’d chatted with occasionally when he hung out at MTT Resort after doing his comedy routines. For that matter, he hadn’t expected Mettaton himself to be there, although he’d had a fair share of chats over pay and scheduling. He didn’t expect each and every one of them to look devastated.

 

The caption had hit him like a freight train. It was written in small, shaky, blocky handwriting. “What Sans would’ve wanted.” A child’s writing. He wondered, selfishly, what they did with his dust, before he realized that there wouldn’t have been any there anyways. It would all have fallen into the Core.

 

What had gone _wrong?_

 

The fact that he was back meant that Frisk had reset. This was a bad thing, as now Flowey wouldn’t fall for that plan again. If the flower remembered all the resets, then clearly he would remember this one too, same as Sans. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice… Sans scowled bitterly, knowing that now he wouldn’t be able to find Flowey again, not unless he was coming after Sans to kill him. He could probably take him on, and they both knew it, so now Flowey would most likely try and sneak up on him, if he had any brains at all. He wondered vaguely why Flowey hadn’t already tried to sneak up on him and murder him by now.

 

_The snow._

 

He looked towards the door, and he realized that maybe it was too cold in Snowdin for Flowey to live here. As long as he stayed in Snowdin, he was safe. He remembered that he’d won, and now it was possible Flowey wouldn’t risk it, if he was lucky.

 

He remembered a lot of things.

 

Sans tried to get his hands to stop shaking.

 

You see, ever since Sans had come back, he’d felt a horrible kind of _awake._ Like he had been in a daze for a long time. Like he’d been half asleep, numb. Now, he felt wired, his every nerve electrified, wide awake and on edge. Maybe that’s what death does to a guy. He wasn’t sure, but either way, it seemed like everything was suddenly put into sharp focus.

 

He could very clearly feel the places in his mind that were blacked out, where memories had just up and left. He could _feel_ where his mind had threatened to tear away slices of his thoughts. And for the first time in a long, long, _long_ time, he could remember Dr. W. D. Gaster in sharp technicolor.

 

He remembered Christmas, a cheerful, melancholy smile from Gaster as he handed Sans a box (even sitting down, Gaster was taller than him). He remembered crisp, clean blue fabric being pulled from the box, and he remembered brand-new, fresh off the presses sneakers (the two things that, every run through, never changed back to how they were. Just like Sans). He remembered Gaster and a young Papyrus running around in loops and Sans cheering him on, and a stack of papers falling as Papyrus ran past and a moment of pause (oh no, now we’ve done it), and Gaster’s dry like a desert laugh, and their own giggles of relief. He remembered Gaster staying up late, and waking up early, and working with a strange kind of energy. He remembered how Gaster always jolted into action, and lurched to a stop, like a puppet someone never quite mastered. He remembered Gaster’s wide, wide, wide eyes, wide, wide, wide smile as Sans ran (yes, ran, like a non-lazy individual, who would’ve thunk) up to him and blabbed about how the patients were all awake.

 

He remembered how Gaster couldn’t cook to save his life, and yet tried anyways at least once a week when collage (combined with his job) wasn’t too bad, nearly burning down their little house in the Capital. Sans could see, memories clear as cellophane, how Gaster had always reminded Sans to take Papyrus to school, and the one morning that he didn’t, how proud Sans had been to report back that day saying how he had defended Papyrus from bullies, some jerks who were calling Papyrus stupid, calling him names that Sans couldn’t stand to repeat. He was beaten and battered and limping but he grinned, grinned, grinned, grim and proud of defending his little brother, and it didn’t matter that Papyrus wasn’t a little kid anymore and was almost a high schooler just like him, because Gaster was proud even as he scolded Sans and wrapped up his injuries. He remembered how Gaster had always been distracted, how he had been fidgety and prone to distraction on his best days and entirely unable to sit still on his worst. He remembered all the nights that he’d sat up with W. D. under the excuse of “finishing homework”, just because he knew that his brother wouldn’t be getting much sleep, and he deserved some company.

 

He remembered how Gaster had always told him how proud he was. How he had always said he believed in Sans.

 

Once he was gone, he decided that it was his duty to do that for Papyrus. Sans told himself that he didn’t mind than nobody could say it to _him_ anymore.

 

When Gaster had finally risen through the ranks and gotten the job with better hours, now he helped Sans with collage and Papyrus with high school, and despite being only a handful of years older, Sans looked up to him almost like a dad. He’d helped Sans get a job in the same lab as him right out of college, and helped foot the student loans early on. He and Sans spent many days discussing theoretical physics over dinner while Papyrus got increasingly irritated (this is likely the reason he didn’t also end up in science—he was tired of hearing it nonstop all the time, and Sans didn’t blame him).

 

He hadn’t realized before then just how much Papyrus had taken after Gaster, in many ways, and he felt like his heart might very well break, knowing that Papyrus would never have any idea about it.

 

As Sans sat in the lab buried in memories, he couldn’t make himself call up Alphys that day to set up cameras. He did most of the calculation by himself, fixing it up best he could. The next day he got around to calling her and explaining, but his heart just wasn’t in it, knowing that it was useless. Maybe she understood that. She didn’t ask many questions, and when she got there, she didn’t ask what was the matter, just took a seat by the machine (god, just looking at it all covered in a sheet made him feel despicable).

 

The worst part of it was, clearly if Frisk had remembered him, then it hadn’t worked. He’d died and not gotten to find Gaster. He’d taken Flowey out with him, but still, he was more than a little infuriated.

 

He didn’t do much over the next few days. Papyrus accused him of “brooding”, which he totally _wasn’t_ because he wasn’t some teenager going through their emo phase, he was an ADULT damn it, and he figured he deserved to pout for a little while. He’d earned that right, at _least_.  His one chance to do something meaningful, to finally contribute to the world, and this kid thought it would be better for his sacrifice to be taken back for some stupid reason. He’d made his peace, he’d done what needed to be done, it was for the greater good, why couldn’t Frisk just leave him? Didn’t they have anything better to do?

 

He remembered the unbridled terror he had felt as he stood on the edge there above what seemed like an endless drop, the Core below him, enticing, repulsing. He remembered how he’d second guessed himself. He remembered sliding off his shoes, if only because he didn’t want them to burn with him. If his Soul would shatter like glass, then at least his soles could stay mostly intact.

 

He wondered if anyone had appreciated the pun. He hoped so.

 

(He didn’t admit to himself that he’d been taking precautions just in case he did end up coming back. He wasn’t sure if they would survive the process. He also didn’t admit to himself that he was pretty sure this plan wouldn’t work. He’d just trusted theory and hoped for the best. He’d gotten the worst instead.)

 

* * *

 

 

Frisk exited the Ruins (it hurt to leave Toriel behind even more the second time, it hurt so much more the second time, but they had to be sure it had worked) and found themselves in the familiar forest again. They darted to the bush to one side of the door, and they visibly relaxed upon seeing the camera there.

 

It might’ve worked. Sans might be back now.

 

They walked forward, eyes trained ahead of them, and focused on walking. The snow felt thick beneath their shoes. They jumped as they heard a stick behind them snap. Frisk spun, eyes wide, smile crossing their face.

 

There was nothing there.

 

Their face fell, and they turned slowly, walking forward again. They could’ve sworn they heard feet crunching on snow, and they turned again. Still nothing. They felt nausea rising in their throat, and they wondered if it was a fluke. If Sans hadn’t… if…

 

They stopped at the bridge, and they stared forward, and they prayed that any second now, snow would crunch beneath worn, ragged sneakers and Sans would come.

 

But nobody came.

 

They finally, with the feeling of ice dribbling down their back, stepped through the bars, walking forwards. They were surprised to see Papyrus there, leaning on the sentry booth and looking perplexed, staring off into space vacantly.

 

He looked up when Frisk approached. His eye sockets widened (Frisk didn’t entirely understand how he did that, but they had long since stopped trying to make sense of the monster world).

 

“Oh my god,” Papyrus said, standing up straight, mouth beginning to gape. “Is—Are you a human?!”

 

Frisk realized with a stab of sadness that Papyrus didn’t remember them now. They nodded once, and dropped their stick so they could sign properly. “My name is F-R-I-S-K, it’s great to meet you!” they signed enthusiastically. Papyrus frowned for a moment before he realized that Frisk was using sign language. He smiled widely, hands on his hips, looking down at Frisk with a kind of glee.

 

“Wowie, a real human!” Papyrus said, awestruck. He cleared his throat before squaring his shoulders. “I am the Great Papyrus, and I am a member of the Royal Guard! Um, almost! It is my duty to capture any human that should pass through, after subjecting them to increasingly elaborate and crafty puzzles of the highest caliber!” he announced.

 

Frisk found themselves smiling despite themselves. “Like junior jumble?” they asked. Papyrus positively beamed.

 

“Precisely!” he said proudly. “It is clearly the most complex of puzzles, without a doubt the superior word-based conundrum!” Frisk never quite got over how once Papyrus went into “Guard” mode, suddenly his vocabulary expanded to the size of most of the dictionary.

 

“What about the crossword?” Frisk asked. “Is it even harder than that?”

 

“It is much more difficult than the crossword!” he exclaimed with a huff. “Anyone who says otherwise clearly has no idea what they’re talking about! Including my brother, he’s quite the jokester and he insists that junior jumble is simple! Quite the prank, isn’t it?”

 

Frisk exhaled, relief flooding through them. They took a moment to quell the tears of relief that threatened to spill. “He sounds like a funny guy,” Frisk signed, and Papyrus nodded vigorously. “I love puzzles, let’s go and try them out.”

 

“Of course!” Papyrus said happily, marching forward through the snow, Frisk tagging along just behind. Frisk pretended like they didn’t hear Papyrus saying under his breath, “I hope Sans will come see this. Wowie, a real human!”

 

They pretended like they didn’t want to climb up on Papyrus’s shoulders like they always had, and go back home to make hot chocolate and spaghetti to act like nothing had gone wrong.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [I slept 21 hours this weekend. First because I got less than 3 hours of sleep Friday night and about four hours the day before, then I went and slept 18 hours because for once in my life that was actually an option.  
> And I'm still tired. Go figure.  
> Hope you all have a fun winter family and/or friend time, and I hope you guys are ready because I seriously lay into these poor innocent characters right about now. Hopefully I can finish editing (aka hell) by Wednesday, until then have a great December day!]


	9. Erikson, 3/7-In vs G; Pur.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Watched the new Star Wars today. Editing this helped me out of the crippling agony that it gave me. 10/10 cinematography. Enjoy!]

 

_The first few days were normal. Maybe it was because it was so fresh in their minds, but whatever might have been the cause, nobody forgot about Sans, to begin with._

Frisk stood still and waited as Papyrus chatted with Doggo, and didn’t tell the canine that he had kicked his smoking habit about a month after Sans’s funeral.

 

_However, perhaps because of the nature of the Core…_

 

The electricity maze was fun to do. Frisk ended up having to do it properly, since Papyrus was on the same side as them this time around. It was frustrating, but fun.

 

_It was around day nine that the first traces of Sans began disappearing._

Frisk bought Nice Cream for both themselves and for Papyrus, and wanted to tell the Nice Cream guy that he should really invest in more Nice Cream if he ever tried selling in Hotland. They didn’t.

 

_One day, walking to go and visit Mettaton, who was beginning to be a pretty good friend after Papyrus stopped leaving his room, Frisk noticed that Sans was no longer on the old performing schedule. That might not have been odd, but it was the exact same schedule as before, complete with tally marks and pencil notes, just lacking his name. It left a blank spot behind that took Frisk a long moment to fill._

 

Frisk kicked the snowball around a bit, trying to get every flag, and when Papyrus complimented their persistence, they didn’t bother saying that they had gotten every flag three or four times over by now, and he just didn’t remember it.

 

_Day eleven, he was gone from Frisk’s contacts. Day thirteen, his sentry post was gone without a trace, and the sock was no longer on the floor of the living room. He was right; it really did pull the whole room together._

 

Frisk wondered how happy the dog couple would be to hear that one day in the future, they would be having a litter of their own. Perhaps only a few months from now. Instead, Frisk rolled in the dirt and convinced them that they were a puppy, then expanded their minds with several well-placed pets.

 

_At week two, Frisk had a scary few moments where they forgot his name entirely. They had to sit and think hard for nearly a solid minute. This was also the day that there was no longer any food in the fridge. Papyrus hadn’t cooked again since the day they found him missing._

 

The stepping puzzle was fun. Frisk had nearly forgotten the answers, but still decided to just act befuddled for Papyrus’s sake. After solving one of them far too quickly, he had seemed a little put out. Frisk make several thoughtful expressions and scratched their chin for an extended amount of time until Papyrus was beaming.

 

_The snowmen that Sans built with them crumbled overnight. His attempt at a quiche was saved in the fridge, as Frisk couldn’t make themselves eat it just yet. It was gone by noon on day 16._

 

The tiles were cold under Frisk’s feet, and they wondered for a long moment if they could try and fix the machine and try again. Papyrus looked so disappointed. The look was too familiar.

 

_When Undyne and Alphys couldn’t remember Sans despite Frisk’s insistence, that’s when they knew they had to do something. But first, they decided that they would have to try and fix it one more time._

 

Greater Dog was excited to see Frisk. Papyrus pouted plenty as Frisk gave the pup undivided attention for several minutes, tossing their stick back and forth for the dog to chase. It was fun. Frisk tried to forget how Greater Dog had walked about with his tail hanging for days after getting the news.

 

_They stayed for three months and tried to pretend nothing was wrong. Papyrus was the only other one to remember. Undyne and Alphys continued hanging out and struck up a relationship. One day, Alphys took Frisk to go visit Asgore. Asgore wouldn’t look Frisk in the eyes. It felt familiar. Frisk spent the rest of the day trying to remember why. They finally remembered as they went to sleep in the guest room upstairs that Sans had looked like that just before he left. The last time Frisk saw him._

 

As they neared the Gauntlet of Super Cool Scariness or whatever it was called, Frisk knew that they couldn’t stand to listen to only one half of the back-and-forth. They sneezed.

 

_Frisk remembered after two weeks that the guest room upstairs used to belong to Sans and felt like a monstrosity for forgetting. They reset._

_But maybe first they tried battling Asgore a bit. Frisk didn’t want to hurt him. Asgore gave them no choice. They counted calmly in their head as Asgore killed them fifteen times in succession. On some level, they felt like they deserved it. They couldn’t really remember why. They never ended up winning the fight. It felt too much like something was missing. Like some puzzle piece was yet to be filled in._

_Maybe it was the dying that helped Frisk remember. Maybe it was a memory of a voice saying quietly, quietly, “I mean, look at yourself! You haven’t died a single time!”. It was the guilt, the sadness, the fear as it was followed by, “Hey, what’s that look supposed to mean? Am I wrong…?”_

 

_Every time Frisk fell silently to the ground after that, feeling their Soul shatter, they felt like they were betraying him just a little bit. Papyrus would be so upset if he could see this. He never liked when anyone got hurt._

 

Frisk smiled at the skeleton.

 

_Frisk smiled at the skeleton._

_Maybe he locked himself away to protect himself from more heartbreak. Maybe he did it because he thought others needed protection from him._

_Frisk remembered their fight, how when they nearly died, Papyrus wouldn’t have that final blow. He stopped, freezing his attacks, releasing Frisk gently, and he simply took Frisk back home. Frisk had shaken their head, popped some bisicles in their mouth, and demanded a second try, then and there. Papyrus had obliged._

_Frisk wondered if he would’ve gone instead of Sans into that fight, if his brother had only asked. They knew without a doubt that he would’ve without hesitation, without pause, without question._

_Frisk felt Determination boiling in their blood as they died to Asgore, as he struck without even the slightest waver, killing the child in front of him._

_They had to try again. They had to win here._

 

 

_Even if it means they would have to reset over and over until the end of time._

_They never won the fight. They couldn’t win the fight. Instead, they looked up at Asgore and saw a sad, tired king, and they decided that this could wait until later. There was someone left to save first._

* * *

 

 

Sans watched on the occasional cameras as Frisk did the puzzles. They were a good enough sport to act like they were stumped from time to time, making Papyrus look very proud of his handiwork. He couldn’t help but notice how they continued asking Papyrus questions about all the things he liked, appearing to streamline the friendship process. Sans felt like that was fair, given how they’d spent a month already being best friends.

 

He couldn’t watch for long, though. Resentment felt like a knife in his chest, making him just go to his room, deciding to try and sleep if he could. Nightmares had been worse than usual, and he constantly felt either on edge or irritated from lack of sleep. It seemed like every time he tried to sleep, he ended up in a cold sweat huddled in his blankets, trying to convince himself of reality.

 

He knew, of course, that he would have to face Frisk eventually. He had no other choice. At some point he would have to say hello to them.

 

It turned out to be sooner rather than later. “Sans!” called Papyrus from downstairs, jolting him awake from his bad dreams (silver flashing and laughing and thorns and a face melting into an evil shape, cackling at him, falling falling falling about to hit the metal and—awake). “Come downstairs, I have made a new friend! Their name is Frisk, and do not be alarmed, but they are a human! Despite that they are very kind, so do not attempt to capture them, given how they are also possibly getting sick? They have sneezed several times and I am not sure how to make soup! Come and assist me!”

 

Sans clenched his hands around the blanket in his hands. “Why don’t you go ask the lady at the shop for stuff to make soup, I probably remember how to do it, but we’ll need stuff to cook!” he called back.

 

“Alright! I will return shortly, come and meet my new friend until I return!” Papyrus called, and he heard the door closing downstairs. He got to his feet, stepping out of his room and walking to the stairs, looking down into the living room.

 

Frisk stared up at him, eyes as wide as if they were seeing a ghost, their surprise only sticking around for a long, heavy moment before a grin threatened to split their face in half.

 

“Hello again,” he said, and his tone made their smile falter for a moment, confusion extinguishing their joy. “Already best friends with Papyrus, huh? That’s pretty cool. I bet he’s happy to have a new friend, always is.” Silence fell for a long moment, and Sans walked down the stairs, turning once he reached the bottom and walking directly past Frisk to the kitchen. He didn’t so much as spare them a glance. Frisk followed him slowly, timidly, uneasily.

 

“You know, I had my reasons for doing it,” he said bitterly, pulling a pan from the cupboard and slamming it onto the counter with more force than was needed, making Frisk jolt, stepping back slightly in alarm. “I didn’t just jump for—for no _reason,_ Frisk, I’m not… I could never just leave Pap behind to deal with that. I had a _reason._ ”

 

He looked up as Frisk signed slowly, timidly. “I know.” He raised an approximation of an eyebrow coldly, and Frisk glanced away. “I saw leaves and roots up there. Flowey never showed up again. They… our friends, I mean, never talked to me about it much, and they all nodded when I said you died fighting something bad, but I don’t think anyone believed me about it. They just weren’t sure how to explain it to me.”

 

Sans huffed, moving to pull some containers from the drawer. “And yet, after I do all I can to set things right, after I make my great big final sacrifice to make _your_ life easier, you go right ahead and take it from me. You make all my hard work pointless.” He looked down at Frisk, grin widening slightly. “Hah, this is exactly why I’m so lazy. Always ends up coming back to bite me thanks to things like you.”

 

“Sans, everyone was so sad.” His hands froze, salt clenched tightly in one. “Papyrus locked himself away in the house after your funeral and stopped speaking to anyone, Alphys blamed herself, Undyne snapped and yelled at me, and… Grillby _cried,_ Sans, I don’t even know how that’s _possible_.” He stared a hole in the salt shaker.

 

“Man, he must’ve been mad that I never paid off my tab,” he said dryly, slamming the shaker to the table, making Frisk flinch. “Don’t you _get_ it, Frisk? Don’t you understand why I did it? Let me tell you something, kid. Sometimes, someone dies. Sometimes, someone never comes back. Sometimes someone jumps off a ledge into the Core and leaves behind someone else to try and scrape their life back together. And you know what? _The world keeps turning_. The person still alive grows up, cries a river, builds a bridge, and _gets over it._ ” Frisk shrunk back as Sans spun to face them, fists clenched, shaking, smile still there, impossibly, impossibly. “Don’t you get it? I bet, after all was said and done, they were glad to see me gone! They realized just how much of a weight I was! I’m worthless anyways, Frisk, there was no big loss here! Sometimes someone doesn’t need saving! I _made_ my _peace_ , and then you just _had_ to drag me back kicking and screaming. Let me tell you something, kid. I would beat you to a pulp here and now, but it’s a five minute walk to and from the store, and Papyrus is going to come walking back in here any second, so let me just say.” His eyes turned to the stove, and he shoved his hands in his pockets. “You broke your promise. And I’ll _remember_ that.”

 

“I tried to keep Papyrus happy and safe. I read him his bedtime story.” Sans wanted to turn back to staring at the table, but he had the decency to at least hear Frisk out. “I didn’t break my promise. I did everything I could once you were gone. I didn’t break my promise. You did.”

 

He recoiled slightly, but Frisk continued. “You left Papyrus all alone to deal with you being gone, and if anyone hurt him, it was you, not me! I just wanted to fix everything! I just wanted to make things right!”

 

“Kid. I think there’s been a mix-up here,” Sans said. “I don’t need saving. I don’t need to be brought back. Sometimes there needs to be a sacrifice to get to the happiest ending.” His fists clenched at his sides. “ _Why_ couldn’t you just let me _die in peace_?” He pushed his hands in his pockets, taking a deep breath to steady himself, to try and make his hands not want to shake. “If you want to try and do everything all over again, fine. If you think it’s worth your time to just replay through again, cool. But I’m not doing it. I’ve played along for years to this stupid repetitive song-and-dance, Frisk, and I’m done. Go ahead and make friends with everyone again, I won’t stop you, I won’t be bitter about it. But just know that I can’t let myself trust you again. I _won’t_ let myself trust you again. I won’t fight you, I won’t try and stop you. I made a promise too once, and I don’t hand those out like cheap cigars. But we’re not friends. I’m smart enough to learn from mistakes.” He shrugged. “Best of luck.”

 

The door banged off the wall as Papyrus strode in, oblivious to how Frisk was frowning, about hands shaking, as Sans smiled up at him, feigning as if nothing was wrong. “Sans, I have returned with ingredients to craft delicious soup!”

 

“That’s awesome Pap, bring it over. I’ll get right to it. Hey, why don’t you show Frisk that show you really like while I make this? The cooking one. They’re a human, they probably don’t know who Mettaton is, do you kid?”

 

Frisk shook their head. “Cool. You do that, I’ll try and see how this soup thing _pans out._ ” Sans turned his attention to making food while Papyrus dragged them away to the television, groaning at the bad joke. He could feel Frisk’s accusatory stare on his back, but after a few moments, he heard Papyrus striking up a conversation again. Frisk played along.

 

Sans made soup. Papyrus babbled on and on as they watched TV. Sans put the soup in a bowl just as Frisk inquired about the action figures Papyrus was describing. He walked into the living room and placed down the soup, eyes trailing to the television screen.

 

“Ah, I have this one who has this shield and it’s so cool—one moment, let me go and get several of them to show you!” Papyrus was up and dashing up the stairs before Sans could blink. So now, he was left all alone to try and keep his cool until he could get his crippling sense of betrayal under control. Yippee.

 

There was a beat of silence, and just as Sans was trying to think of something to say, some excuse to be back upstairs again, some excuse to escape this, he felt tiny arms encircling his torso. Frisk buried their face in his mysteriously soft stomach, hugging him tightly, tightly, tightly, and he felt the way that their small shoulders shook just slightly. He felt his breath catch and he looked down, surprised, head tilting in confusion.

 

“I’m sorry.” Their voice was muffled against the fabric, and he froze at the soft, underused, impossibly small voice. “I just… wanted to have you back. I… I…” They sniffled pathetically. “I missed my big brother.”

 

A long silence that might’ve been a few seconds or an eternity.

 

Sans felt a moment of numbness, then a beat of comprehension, before guilt washed over him, threatening to suffocate him in its heaviness. His breathing got funny for a moment. He had never felt more ashamed of himself than in that particular few seconds, that endless eternity. He realized, cripplingly, tear-jerkingly, that Frisk was just a little kid still. At least he had the privilege of losing someone when he was older, when it could make sense to him. It was so unfair of him to expect Frisk to leave him behind, not when they could do something about it. Frisk was almost nine, by their own claim. Because they were so mind-bogglingly mature for their age, he sometimes forgot that. But it came rushing back into the forefront of his memory right then, and he felt _horrible._

 

He returned the tight hug, and Frisk didn’t protest even as they felt his arms nearly crushing them. “I’m sorry too, kid. But… I just… I had to try,” he said weakly. He swallowed hard, tilting his head up. “Hey, Papyrus! Why don’t you just bring all of them down?”

 

Papyrus shouted something back, but Sans wasn’t listening, because he was pushing Frisk back, looking them in the eye. “Kid, that plan isn’t going to work again, and the weed’s probably going to be really mad when you next see him. I need you to stay safe for Papyrus’s sake, okay?”

 

They nodded, hands flashing again. “Also, Grillby was crying because he missed you. He said your tab was always more of a running joke. Most of the time he just gave you food on the house. It was actually pretty reasonable. Undyne paid off the rest of it before she got angry with me and stormed off.”

 

Sans felt an odd warmth in his chest. “Grillby’s a great guy,” he said, and Frisk nodded. “Hey, kid… you…” He swallowed the lump in his throat. “You really think I’m like a big brother to you?”

 

Their nod held no shame or hesitation. “ _And_ Papyrus,” they signed. “He just doesn’t know it yet.”

 

Sans chucked at that, and Papyrus came downstairs in what was his best attempt at holding all of his super cool action figures at one time. He beamed as he saw Sans and Frisk sitting together on the carpet. “Ah! I see you two are already getting along swimmingly!”

 

“Yeah, we are, Pap. Apparently my chicken noodle is _souper._ ”

 

“Sans!”

 

“It really _broth_ us together.”

 

“Oh my god!”

 

“I think _bowl-th_ of us will be best buddies pretty _spoon._ ”

 

“I hate everything!”

 

For a second, Frisk felt like they were back to the way things were supposed to be. Everyone was safe for now. Of course, they would have to face all those challenges again, but… now that Frisk knew it was possible, and that they would have friends at their side through it all…

 

They were filled with Determination.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [This is my December Celebratory gift to you guys. The children are all happy at the end of the chapter. Hooray, cheers all around!  
> Anyways, I wanted to use this as an opportunity to say some stuff. I'll try and make this brief.  
> First of all, I want to thank each and every person who gave a kudos. I'm genuinely blown away that I got even thirty kudos on this, and here we are with 180. I cannot thank you all enough for the support. I've never had the courage to post anything before a little over a month and a half ago, and the fact that people like what I write is phenomenal. Seriously. Thank you. Secondly, I wanted to thank people who've left me comments in particular. Lately I've been going through Real Life Troubles, and stress has been kinda high, but seeing your comments has made me happier than is probably reasonable.  
> I'll step off my soapbox now, but really, enjoy your winter breaks and stay safe out there. Hope that however your week is going, it gets better than it is now. New chapter next week, homies! Later.]


	10. <script type="text/javascript"> snowStorm.snowColor = '#bbbbbb'; // snowStorm.flakesMaxActive = 30;  </script>

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Almost New Year's, and it's just now getting colder! ^^'  
> Anyways, hope those of you up towards the north enjoy reading about more cold stuff! Have fun]

 

The next morning, after letting Frisk sleep over to get better, they started over with trying to become best friends with Papyrus. Sans texted Alphys that the kid wasn’t half bad, and that he could take over with keeping an eye on them while they were still in Snowdin. She said that it was okay, and that she had other work to do anyways. Sans pretended like he was unaware of this other work being stocking up on more noodles and watching a few seasons of anime.

 

Frisk dragged Papyrus out to the forest again, saying that they needed plenty of room to make all their snow angels. They claimed that it was a human thing, and Papyrus was more than happy to participate if it meant learning more about humans. This time around, Frisk explained it a little more clearly and Papyrus got the hang of it within three tries. Soon the immediate area around Doggo’s station was speckled with snow angels sized either really large or excessively small. There was a single lump-like shape towards one side where Sans had taken a nap instead (he dreamed of snow and laughter and having a great time).

 

They advanced through the puzzle-littered woods near Snowdin, their next task apparently making an igloo by the large patch of ice (Frisk darted off towards the river briefly, returning not long later shoving a handful of snow into their bag). The effort was fruitless in the end, not for lack of trying, but because they were halfway through when they realized they had made it hardly big enough for Frisk to fit in alone. Frisk promised to enjoy it enough for the three of them.

 

They tried briefly to play a few rounds of snow golf, but when they got to the third flag (Papyrus’s turn to try), the snowball ‘mysteriously’ ended up hitting Sans square in the chest. His retaliation was swift, a handful of loosely packed snow returned for revenge, showering Frisk as well in its loose arc. Who won the battle that followed those two events, it wasn’t certain. While Frisk was incredibly good at dodging, Papyrus was relentless, and the fight ended up leaving snowy carnage all the way from the unplugged microwave clear down to the stepping puzzles. It wasn’t clear if the successor was Frisk of Papyrus. It was definitely _not_ Sans. He made a pun about how it was a really _ice_ day for a snow fight and went down under a sea of frozen ammunition as Frisk and Papyrus spared him no mercy from that point onward. Later on he complained that they had teamed up on him. Frisk had solemnly replied that all’s fair in _glove_ and war.

 

(Papyrus shoved them both into a snowbank.)

 

Frisk marched them past the tile puzzle and they spent about half an hour trying to help Lesser Dog with his mysteriously elongated snowdog. It was abandoned too after they found that the world just wasn’t meant for snowdogs to have such extensive necks.

 

But the need to sculpt snow was strong. Frisk pulled them both along with the intention of using the snow poffs as bases for the snow army they would amass. Papyrus had excitedly informed Frisk that he and Sans had, in fact, made snowsketetons already. He proudly exhibited his own, Sans and Frisk not hesitating to commend how well he did on it. It did, in fact, look exactly like him.

 

Frisk frowned and pointed at the lump of snow with the name ‘Sans’ scrawled across it in what seemed to be the same stuff Papyrus used to color in his scarf. “What happened to yours?” they asked, and Papyrus frowned as well, crossing his arms over his chest.

 

“I _tried_ to tell him to put effort in, but he just said ‘This is who I truly am inside’ and acted offended that I insulted his ‘inner beauty’.”

 

Sans snickered, hands still in his pockets. “That’s my final form. My aesthetic. The culmination of everything that I am and ever will be,” he said jokingly, but Frisk and Papyrus continued frowning at him. “Oh, c’mon. It’s funny.”

 

Frisk huffed, walking decisively over to the pile and scraping the name away, beginning to pile on snow slowly but steadily. Papyrus walked over to join them, working in tandem. Sans blinked in surprise when he realized what they were doing, beginning to stammer in embarrassment. “Wait, no, guys, you can’t just—“

 

“We can and we will,” Frisk signed before returning to the task calmly.

 

“We will create a snow-Sans worthy of the real thing! A sculpture fitting for my cool brother! Who makes too many puns and should nap less but is otherwise not in any way a sloshy pile of snow!” Papyrus announced.

 

Sans shifted on his feet for a moment before sighing in defeat. “Fine,” he mumbled under his breath, turning and kneeling, beginning to make his own pile of snow between theirs and the one Papyrus made.

 

Frisk and Papyrus made the pile pretty quickly, and spent nearly half an hour carving it with precision, Frisk’s tiny hands helping with the details. Neither of them paid any mind to Sans, focusing on the masterpiece that was soon to be instead. The work was challenging, and after a while Papyrus began getting frustrated, but Frisk had slyly mentioned that this was a lot like a _puzzle_ in some ways, and that got him back to working with renewed drive.

 

Eventually, Frisk felt a bony hand tapping them on the shoulder, and they looked up only to see Sans smiling cheerfully. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, and both Papyrus and the human turned curiously. Frisk gasped, eyes lighting up, and Papyrus grinned, glancing down at Sans with pride (Sans himself staring at his toes meekly).

 

There, standing tall, was a snow-Frisk, an actual stick in hand, head tilted to look up at the sky. Their eyes were closed and their mouth was set in a straight, solemn line, and looking at it, the only way you could describe the figure was “determined”.

 

Frisk tackled Sans in a hug, a squeak of appreciation escaping as they squeezed with all their might. Sans chuckled. “Not much compared to your work, but, y’know. Pap is the best at everything, how am I supposed to compare, am I right?” It didn’t look quite as good as Papyrus’s; it was simpler and lumpier towards the bottom, leaning forward dangerously. But nevertheless, Frisk was thankful beyond words.

 

“Well, I believe the human and I have nearly finished our own project now,” Papyrus said proudly, stepping aside to show Sans the (nearly) final product.

 

Frisk pulled out of the hug and looked up at Sans, who was beaming even wider than them. “Wow, it’s… hah. It’s really good, Pap. Thanks, guys,” he said weakly. He shoved his hands in his pockets, staring in wonder at what was a _really_ good likeness of him. He stood beside it, mirroring the grin (his was still slightly wider, though). “Which one it the real Sans? Nobody knows,” he joked. “I should set this up at my station so it looks like I’m working, then go take a nap somewhere.”

 

“Do not do that!” Papyrus protested loudly, and Frisk giggled. The taller skeleton looked around, walking towards his snow-self and leaning down. “I believe we hid the paint back here, didn’t we?” he asked, digging into the snow with his gloves. He hummed happily as he pulled the little tube of red paint from the snow, brushing it off cheerfully. “Aha! Time for the finishing touch,” he said happily.

 

He handed Frisk the tube of paint and lifted them up to they were eye-to-eye with the snow-Sans. The shorter skeleton watched curiously as they smeared some at the corner of his grin. “What’s that for?” he asked, curiously.

 

Papyrus put Frisk back down, who simply signed “Ketchup.”

 

He chuckled, taking the tube from the young child. “Nice. Let me finish mine too, then.” Both Papyrus and Frisk watched as Sans walked to the little snow-Frisk and knelt down, squeezing paint onto his fingers and carefully, carefully, drawing an arc on their chest, another, meeting to make a point and—

 

Frisk felt something somewhere in their chest warm as they saw Sans drawing their soul right in the center of their chest.

 

“What’s that for?” Papyrus asked, tilting his head.

 

“Kid’s got a real radiant Soul, wouldn’t you say?” Sans asked, looking down at Frisk.

 

“Absolutely! Very bright.” Papyrus agreed.

 

Frisk’s eyes glittered as they looked at the two skeleton brothers, and for the first time saw the family resemblance between them. At that moment, they both wore a very similar smile.

 

“I want soup. Then we make the snow army,” Frisk said simply, and Papyrus laughed, turning to walk back towards Snowdin. Sans squeezed Frisk’s shoulder once, affectionately, and the small human began wondering if maybe things could really work this time through.

 

* * *

 

Papyrus ended up making Frisk stay in the “human capture zone” the next few nights, but not without making sure the small human had a comfortable place to sleep. The confrontation by the river took place a few days later, this time consisting of Papyrus swinging much faster from “Royal Guard” to “New Best Buddy” after Frisk reminded him gently of how they were practically already best friends, and best friends didn’t turn over other best friends to get killed by Undyne because that would not be a very nice friend thing to do. After that, Frisk slept on the couch again, and occasionally helped Papyrus cook if they could, because it was actually quite fun. They left room in their snow army for new recruits, knowing that they would eventually make more with Undyne. They dreaded the confrontation, knowing that it would hurt seeing Undyne hate them like that.

 

They knew that they couldn’t wait forever to fight Undyne, though. They told Papyrus that they were going to go meet her and become best friends too, and he took it rather well, handing over a Tupperware of spaghetti for the road, telling Frisk to be safe and not talk to strangers and to look both ways before crossing the street and to have their cell phone on and to remember to use their turn signal and to stay hydrated and to eat their vegetables and—

 

Sans ended up having to step in after a few minutes of Frisk suffering Papyrus’s maternal wrath, saying he would try and keep an eyesocket on Frisk to make sure they were safe if it made it easier for Papyrus. Papyrus relaxed greatly at that, saying that he really did need to get back to work soon, and that technically Sans _was_ doing his job by watching the human so he would let it slide for now.

 

They forged on, one hand reaching into their bag and finding a perfectly powdery, mushy, crunchy handful of snow. They hoped that it wouldn’t melt in Waterfall, but decided against putting it in the first box they came across. They wanted this piece to see all of the Underground.

 

* * *

 

This time around, Frisk wasn’t scared as Undyne stood atop the ledge, peering down, spear glowing with radiant power in her hand, ready to pounce. They were prepared to run as Undyne threw countless spears at them, ducking and weaving across the dock. They listened patiently to the echo flowers, and decided to wait until they could find one that hadn’t already heard a whisper before adding onto them. Nobody should have their voice erased from the world.

 

They pretended to fall for Sans’s telescope prank again (Frisk had a feeling that he knew it, too), heard two soft voices rustling from beneath glowing blue petals, gave a statue an umbrella to shelter it from the rain. They beat the piano puzzle, tapping out a song that was eerily familiar. They remembered a soft tune that Toriel had hummed as she helped put new laces in Frisk’s shoes, as she scooped up papers covered in messy crayon drawings, as she brushed tangles out of Frisk’s hair wearing the softest smile they’d ever seen.

 

They pushed the dog out of their bag, and he stole the ancient artifact. They were annoyed. They held the umbrella for Monster Kid, who didn’t seem to notice how Frisk held it more over them than over themselves. They inquired (it was difficult to sign without both hands free) about what it was like at their school. MK was more than happy to talk about it, cheerfully telling a story about how once the king himself had gone to the school to discuss responsibility with them.

 

The view of the castle was gorgeous. Frisk gazed out and wondered who all must live in such a big, big place. Did the king have butlers and maids bustling around and making food and preparing fancy dinners? Monsters seemed so different, so much more grounded, and Frisk was almost certain that the king that went to talk to the children in a school likely didn’t have people waiting on him hand and foot.

 

They wondered if he was lonely. It certainly seemed like it back in the throne room.

 

This time, when they got to the ledge, Frisk refused to go up first. Instead, they instructed Monster Kid to put his legs out to the sides and wordlessly lifted him onto their shoulders. He stammered, confused, asking what they were doing. Frisk looked up at him and nodded to the ledge. He seemed to get the idea, straightening his knees, Frisk grabbing his ankles and lifting (he was deceptively heavy). Frisk’s muscles burned, their arms shook, their forehead beaded with sweat, but slowly, painstakingly, Monster Kid got up the ledge. First his head and shoulders, then his torso, and then, with a final, powerful shove—he was up.

 

He looked down at Frisk, eyes sparkling. “Yo, thanks dude!” he said enthusiastically. “But, uh, how’re you gonna get up too?”

 

Frisk held up a finger, the universal sign for “wait a second”, then walked to the can that held the umbrellas. They took out the umbrellas, leaning them neatly in a row against the wall. They picked up the can, placing it upside down about a meter or so away from the ledge.

 

“It’s too short to just step up, yo,” MK said, confused. “Or even to reach.”

 

Frisk didn’t look up, having stepped back, their face tight with seriousness. On most kids, it might look comical. But for Frisk, it somehow worked. They stepped back a few paces, kneeling to tighten their shoelaces quickly, standing up, cracking their knuckles, scraping their feet against the ground.

 

“What’re you doing?” MK asked, curiosity on his face. Frisk set their jaw, pushing back their shoulders.

 

They pushed off, dashing forward, gaining as much momentum as they could, jumping once—in the air now—foot connecting with the top of the metal container—hands reaching for the ledge, MK’s eyes wide—

 

They managed to grab it, the stone digging into their palms, but Frisk hardly seemed to notice the pain. Monster Kid was beaming. “That was awesome! Come on, you can do it! Go for it, dude!!!”

 

Hearing the young monster cheering them on, Frisk was filled with Determination.

 

They pulled themselves up, jaw clenched tight, fingernails scraping and trying to find purchase. Monster Kid fell to his knees, sitting and stretching his legs out. “Grab my feet!” he said brightly. Frisk took ahold of his ankles, managing to pull themselves up with the handholds. First their torso, then swinging up their legs, and they were up. They sat down a bit away from the edge, breathing heavily, and Monster Kid smiled at them.

 

“Never been able to get up a ledge before, yo! Thanks a bunch!” he said, and Frisk looked up at him with tired eyes. They remembered seeing the disappointment on his face as he’d turned to walk away the first time around, the pain that was there. As if this had happened a dozen times before. As if he was used to getting left behind because he couldn’t get up.

 

It was definitely worth hurt palms to make someone this happy.

 

The yellow buddy looked down at Frisk’s hands, curious. “Why are your hands oozing?” he asked curiously, and Frisk paid attention to their hands for the first time so far. There was a gash running over their callouses, despite how tough the skin there was by now, and although it wasn’t bleeding heavily, it sure didn’t look good. They felt a pang of dismay, realizing that it would be difficult to speak to anyone if their hands were hurt. They winced as they reached for their bag, pain shooting up their arm.

 

“Are you okay?” Monster Kid asked, worried. “You look like you’re in pain.”

 

Frisk held out their hand so he could see, and Monster Kid frowned. “But how are you hurt? You weren’t in a battle,” he asked. Frisk tilted their head. “That ledge must’ve been sharp as a knife to hurt you! Usually it takes something pretty bad to hurt someone outside of a battle. Weird, man!” Frisk put that information away for later, then tenderly moved to their bag, rummaging through with furrowed eyebrows and a small hiss of pain. Monster Kid scooted over to look too. They pulled the container of pasta from their bag, opening it carefully (it hurt to move their fingers). The noodles might be cold, but they needed to heal up, and monster food’s magic was always great to have when you felt sick or got hurt in a fight.

 

But as they chowed down on the cold pasta (they shared some with MK, but after a few bites he wrinkled his nose and said he wasn’t hungry anymore. It wasn’t _that_ bad, really), they didn’t feel the magic hum through their fingers (it always seemed a little confused, what with the lack of magic humans had). The blood wasn’t oozing as rapidly anymore, but Frisk was still worried about how it didn’t seem to be going away. After half a Bisicle, it still wasn’t healing. The magic ended up swirling rapidly through their veins, making them feel more alert, but not taking even a little bit of the edge off the wounds.

 

Monster Kid leaned down to their bag, using his nose to open it up wide enough to look. “Hey, here, use that ribbon to tie it up!” he suggested, nodding down at the bag. Frisk thought this over, then nodded happily, pulling out the faded ribbon and untying the bow, ripping it in half with their teeth once they decided it would be long enough to cover both wounds. They tried futilely to tie it around their hand, but it was hard to do when they were both injured, and one-handed tying was no easy thing to begin with.

 

“Hold on, let me try something, yo,” MK said, and Frisk held out their hand gingerly. He stared, eyes narrowed at the ribbon, as if trying to intimidate it into tying itself. A few seconds passed in silence. Frisk shifted awkwardly, about to try and sign a few words to ask what he was doing, but suddenly they felt a gently warmth emanating from the ribbon. They watched the ends limply twitch upward, twisting around into a knot slowly, torturously, pulling tight. Frisk looked up at MK in awe.

 

He blushed. “It’s how I tie my shoes. I’ve been practicing. I’m the first kid in my class that can use my magic on purpose to do stuff! Cool, huh?” Frisk nodded eagerly. They held out their other hand, and while this time the ribbon moved more decisively, it was also sluggish. MK was sweating pretty badly and needed a second to catch his breath by the end. Frisk offered a Nice Cream to him, and he took it gratefully between his teeth, munching it down in just a few bites. “Caa’t oo ‘at vewy ofen,” he said around the ice cream before he swallowed the last bite. “Might need help with my shoes tomorrow, but yo, still cool to tie something other than shoes!”

 

Frisk nodded happily, flexing their fingers experimentally. The pain was duller now, and they painstakingly tried to sign something. “We go?” they asked simply, and MK nodded.

 

They began walking again, and Frisk looked down at their hands occasionally, wondering whose ribbon this once was. They decided that if they ever found out, they’d thank them.

 

“Yo, do you think we’ll get to see Undyne again? She’s _sooooo_ cool!”

 

Frisk smiled, nodding, hands moving despite the pain. “Yes. She is.”

 

They forged on.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Undyne is so cool.  
> Hope y'all have a great New Year's, make sure that you stay safe out there and be responsible, kudos and comments very appreciated, have a swell day! 'Till the next chapter!]


	11. en passant

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Winter finally arrives! I've enjoyed my week watching people slip on the ice. Enjoy the chapter!]

 

Undyne waited.

 

It wasn’t like her wait was terribly exciting. Or even all that different from waiting for literally anything else. She was used to waiting for things. Waiting for people to stop looking at her funny when she told them she was the leader of the Royal Guard. Waiting for the kettle to whistle. Waiting for a human to _finally_ fall into the Underground so she could _finally_ do what she’d trained most of her life for. Waiting for Papyrus to show up for his training. Weighting the barbell a little more to maximize muscle growth.

 

The pun made her smile to herself. The smile faded after a moment though.

 

God, Waterfall sure was gloomy sometimes.

 

She was definitely used to living in the soggy slice of the Underground. She’d lived there her whole life, and like most of the monsters she tended to stay towards the areas that were more brightly lit. Some of the older monsters speculated that before the Core was completed, the worst part about the Underground had always been how dark it got at night. Now they had lanterns, electricity. Heat for the houses in Snowdin, light for the marshes in Waterfall, fast transport through the heat of Hotland. The places near the Capital were apparently really nice, all strung up with lights of a billion colors. She’d only ever been there once, and couldn’t stay long. That close to Hotland, she dried out really fast and constantly needed to be chugging water down. Waterfall and Snowdin were just about the only places that stayed consistently… watery.

 

Here in the darker, deserted parts of Waterfall, she couldn’t help but feel lonely sometimes. The dripping of water that had likely dripped for centuries before her. Silence but for a thousand variations of sloshing, splashing, waves breaking, ripples spreading outward into nothing.

 

She punched a boulder, cracking it in half just because she could. The sound was satisfying, but when the echoes faded away, the silence seemed even quieter and lonelier. She sat back down in her alcove, eyes falling to the water again.

 

The only good thing about this dark section of the watery caverns of Waterfall was the fact that if you listened hard, sometimes you could hear the sound of a music box far, far away. The caves were angled just so, making the sound of it rebound through. She felt a spark of hope listening to it. After all these years, she finally had hope. A human, a real, live, actual human was here. She almost wanted to chase after them, run until she couldn’t run anymore, rip up reeds and break a path for herself if she had to. She luckily had the better judgement that kept her from busting holes in walls to chase after the small, weak looking human.

 

But she remembered everything she had learned from the inscriptions on the walls of the caves, illuminated in a light, weak blue. Humans were dangerous. They may look weak and fleshy, but they could hurt us worse than we can imagine. We lost the war for a reason. If a human is strong, then fighting them is useless. You will lose.

 

The human was a kid, but if the way they dodged and weaved to avoid attacks was anything to go by, they clearly would be a dangerous force of nature in true combat.

 

She wondered for a moment if she was entirely safe. She shook off the thought, knowing that it didn’t really matter. Seven human Souls. They only needed seven human Souls and then all of monsterkind could be freed from this prison. She would do her duty, what she had trained so long to do, no matter what the risk, no matter what the cost, she would do what had to be done.

 

Maybe that was another reason she had made it this far, gotten to this position, the strongest of the Royal Guard. This is why she was called the best that monsterkind had to offer. She didn’t care about being famous, or well known, or admired above everyone else.

 

She just wanted them all to be _free._

 

Undyne looked up as she heard a soft voice saying something, echoing in the cavern around her.

 

“What is this place? I’ve never been to this part of Waterfall before, yo.” A young voice. Somehow… familiar? She remembered a kid who sometimes came up to her, gushing about how cool she was. She frowned. How had he found her?

 

She opened her mouth, about to reply, when she heard the voice speaking again. “Oh. Wait, if it’s dangerous, then how come we wanna go across it at all? We could turn around instead. I always find a way!”

 

Undyne paused, listening hard. We? Maybe there was someone else there too and she hadn’t heard them. Kid was probably just wandering around with one of his friends. She always did when she was younger.

 

But she heard no response. Instead, he spoke again. “Yo, like, I get that you’re the one of us who can catch themselves, but I’m the one who can call for help!” Another pause of silence. It sounded like two someones had stopped just above the niche she was sitting in under the pathway (the only way to get to Hotland quickly and without walking through itchy reeds was through this cave system, she knew well by now). “Well… okay, yeah, I guess it does make sense for me to go second then… but still. I don’t like it. Yo, are you sure?” A moment’s pause. “Alrighty. Go ahead then. But if you fall, I can’t pull you back up, yo, remember!”

 

She listened as footsteps, small, tentative footsteps pattered slowly across the wood over her head. It creaked softly and the small voice called out, “Yo, careful!” The feet continued forward, but the old, rotting wood didn’t give out. Undyne could just barely see a small figure between the cracks in the boards. They stopped, turning back around. “Aww, what? It can too hold us both, look, you’re standing there just fine!” A pause. Undyne squinted, trying to see who the small figure was. She saw movement, a bit jerky, of their arms. She felt an alarm bell in the back of her mind. “Look, I’ll just wait for you to be out a bit further then I’ll follow, yo!” The rippling water was enough to throw light around the dimly lit cave. Undyne caught the barest glimpse of a stick in their hand, a sweater colored bright blue with bright violet stripes…

 

The figure stumbled back as a spear erupted from the wood at their feet. Undyne stepped from the shadows onto the lower dock, and from her new vantage point she glared with hatred at the small human who stared down at her with only mild surprise.

 

(She took a moment to indulge in curiosity, wondering why the human was not petrified at that moment. Instead, her stare of pure anger and hatred was met with… sadness? Her armor’s helmet didn’t allow for it to show, but her hand clenched ever so slightly less tightly around her spear.)

 

The human broke into a run, and their friend (indeed the young monster kid, just as she’d thought) called out in alarm as the dock fractured under the duress of her spear. She switched to blue magic, hoping to minimize property damage. It was a bit too late; nobody could enter this dock now with the beginning of it all busted up like that. Perhaps that was a good thing, as it kept the young monster out of the way of danger in the meantime.

 

She chased after them, calling up spears almost instinctively to try and skewer them (end it now, set all of these monsters free), and the human twirled out of the way of danger, darting and weaving through Undyne’s attacks. She moved faster, hit harder with each new attack, warming up to combat again, chasing after the child as best she could. Her visibility was a bit shot with her helmet, but the human had the high ground, perfect for retaliation, and she couldn’t afford to take it off right then. It was too dangerous.

 

She felt herself grinning as she forced the human into a tactical corner, knowing that they had nowhere else to run now. She hopped up onto the dock, looming and terrifying, wearing a wide grin as she paced towards them slowly. She had hardly even broken a sweat from this fight. She’d thought, all this time, that humans were bad, really dangerous, really deadly when it came to it. But she was worse.

 

She stared from behind the visor of her helmet as the human turned, stick clenched tightly in their hand, and for the first time she noticed that they wore strips of what might be cloth around their hands. Her gaze moved to their face as they set their jaw, set their shoulders back, and tilted their head up fearlessly.

 

Man. This kid sure did have a lot of courage, huh? It’s a shame they never got to have a _real_ fight.

 

As she summoned her spears, thrusting them directly through the wood of the dock, making it splinter wonderfully and echo through the cavern around them, she almost felt guilty watching the fear crossing the human’s face as they fell into the yawning abyss below them.

 

She stared into the darkness below, and waited for the sound of a crash. In the meantime, she listened to the dripping of water that had likely dripped for centuries before her. The silence that fell after the crack was even quieter and lonelier. She could no longer hear the sound of the music box.

 

* * *

 

The sensation of falling had, by now, been linked to very conflicted emotions for Frisk. The déjà vu was all that kept Frisk from crying out this time. Why did it always have to be falling?

 

The darkness that they fell through threatened to swallow Frisk whole, tearing them into shreds of imprints of color and dissolving them into nothing. They _hated_ this fall. The first time around, it had felt like an eternity too. The first time around, they hadn’t died yet, and so didn’t know why it felt so terribly soul-wrenching. Here, suspended in the fall, the darkness turning them around and driving the air from their lungs, it bore an uncanny resemblance to the void that they ended up suspended in after a particularly hard fight. They would always step forward on shaking knees, feeling their Determination seep through their veins, and they would find themselves alive, standing, as if time had been suspended and they had simply imagined everything after. They would step forward and their foot would land on the dirt again, the world falling into place around them. They would leave behind the darkness that made them feel almost as if they were not entirely alone. As if there was someone about to pounce. Frisk forced themselves to turn around in the air, wanting, _needing_ to see who was there behind them—

 

The ground met them just before they could catch a glimpse.

 

* * *

 

The small human felt the echoes reverberating through the marrow of their bones. They couldn’t open their eyes. They didn’t open their eyes. Their head hurt. What was their name? They were someone. They fell a moment ago. They were in pain. They were in agony. Was something broken? The child called for help. They expected for nobody to come. Why had they called out at all? They would die down here. Where was down here?

 

“It sounds like it came from over here…”

 

Unfamiliar. Familiar. Foreign. Never heard before. God, their head hurt. Were they drowning? It was so dark.

 

“Oh! You’ve fallen down, haven’t you…” The voice was small. They felt bitterness rising in their throat. They wanted to scream, ‘no duh, idiot’, and they didn’t. “Are you okay?” They wanted to scream ‘duh, no, idiot’, and they didn’t. God, their head hurt.

 

“Here, get up…” Soft hands. Familiar hands. The pain kept their eyes squinted shut, but they wondered for a moment why on earth these hands were so fuzzy.

 

They felt their lips moving. Why was that strange? That wasn’t strange. Why were their lips moving? They said something. How?

 

“Chara, huh? That’s a nice name.” That was their name. Who was Chara? It was them. Why did that name feel so sad? The splitting headache split them in two. The human’s eyes opened, and Frisk was left behind in the darkness. They felt themselves regaining consciousness just as the voice spoke again.

 

“My name is—“

 

Frisk spat out water.

 

They sat bolt upright, their hands moving to clutch their chest tightly, their Soul suddenly feeling like it had begun splintering. It faded within the first three ragged coughs Frisk made, expelling water from their throat. They breathed hard, and rubbed at their stinging eyes. Frisk was shocked to find tears there. Why had they been crying?

 

They allowed themselves a few moments to regain their bearings. Water. Trash. Ribbon hands. Undyne fight. Fall. Seen this before. They realized that they’d had that same dream (dream nightmare vision memory) before, in a different time, and they felt like an idiot for feeling scared. They’d gotten cut off at the end the other time too.

 

Frisk pushed up and off the bed of flowers, trying their best to brush the seeds from their sweater. Remembering Flowey, Frisk felt a bit ill for a moment. They found that the contents of their bag were mostly intact, and were relieved to see that both the pie (Butterscotch Cinnamon, a warm hug left far, far behind, but never forgotten, not now, not the first time around) and the snow (a voice in Frisk’s subconscious murmured, “Take this till the ends of the earth”, and Frisk didn’t question it) were just fine. They noticed their stick stuck on a trash pile, nearly having floated away while they were out. Frisk picked it up, and saw that the blood on their hands had washed off a bit in the water. That was good. Frisk remembered Monster Kid and felt a bit bad, knowing he had been left behind. It was an accident, but either way, Frisk felt guilt gnawing at their insides nonetheless.

 

Frisk’s eyes rose to the area around them. They relaxed one muscle at a time, terror still fresh in the back of their mind. They clenched the stick in their hand, and the ache of pain from their palm grounded them. Frisk took a step forward, then another. They walked past the piles of trash, and barely spared a glance at the waterfall carrying away piles of trash into the abyss. Frisk’s eyes fell on a hat, stained with mud, floating past and over the edge. Frisk took a moment to ponder just how long things had been cycling through like this. Decades? Centuries?

 

Either way, the thought of the water having carried away all those years’ worth of trash but somehow, miraculously, not Frisk…

 

They were filled with Determination.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Jinkies, I love writing for Undyne! Hope you all enjoyed, kudos and comments are much appreciated (wowie 220 kudos, I'm dizzy 0.0), have a wonderful day in wherever you live!]


	12. N=R(*) x f(p) x n(e) x f(l) x f(i) x f(c) x L

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Pfffff what do you m ean this was written in three hours and is unedited whaaaaat???? im sorry]

 

Sans was beginning to notice a pattern here.

 

Oddly enough, this pattern was new. Usually, in all the time when it was just that flower screwing everyone over, his nightmares (sometimes they seemed almost like memories, only they hadn’t happened yet—time never did behave when Sans was concerned) just fluctuated with his mental state. It sort of made sense, in a way. But the first time Frisk went through, it had seemed a lot like this. His nightmares had picked up the moment they crossed the threshold out of the Ruins, and hadn’t died down until they’d been prepared to fight Asgore. Then they’d just gone back to normal. He’d assumed that it was due to nerves.

 

He was starting to doubt that hypothesis.

 

He woke up on the couch to see Papyrus pacing, phone in hand, biting his fist and face curled into nervousness. “Hey, Pap. Hold the phone, somebody looks nervous.”

 

Papyrus gave him a half-assed glare before he returned to pacing. “This is not time for your jokes, Sans, I am in the midst of a very serious choice,” he said.

 

“Yeah, I knew that pun would be a hard _cell_.” Sans shot finger guns and Papyrus continued as if he hadn’t heard.

 

“You see, I, the Great Papyrus, hold myself to a very high moral standard, because obviously nothing is more important to have in a famous Royal Guardsman than good, wholesome moral standards! I would rather be known as the Great Papyrus for being a great guy, not because I am the best at hitting things! Because Undyne will always be the best at hitting things! She is very strong!” Papyrus fiddled with his phone for a moment nervously. “But I may be forced to ignore orders from Undyne in order to protect my new and very cool human friend!”

 

“Sounds like you need to make that call, Pap.”

 

“Sans!” Papyrus whined, beginning to pace with more vigor. “Will you please take this seriously?!”

 

“What do you want from me bro, advice or a shoulder?” Sans asked, sitting up and crossing his legs.

 

“Advice, please,” Papyrus asked, flopping beside him on the couch.

 

“Alright. So you have a choice here,” Sans said, leaning his elbows on his knees. “You can be a good friend and protect an innocent human, which is the moral thing to do. But to do that, you’d need to go against orders from Undyne, who is in charge of the whole Royal Guard.” Papyrus nodded, looking distressed. “Or, option two, you could tell Undyne nothing at all, and Frisk could get hurt in the process.” Papyrus nodded, looking even more distressed. “Hey, hold on a second, I think I have a good idea. If Undyne and Frisk were friends too, then they wouldn’t have to fight, right?”

 

“Sans! That is a brilliant idea!” Papyrus said, jumping to his feet in his excitement. “All I need to do is convince her that Frisk isn’t half bad and everyone can be friends! It is the perfect plan!”

 

“Haha. Yeah. Maybe you can drag Frisk along for that top secret training stuff, Undyne would probably think it’d be fun.”

 

“Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?!” Papyrus wrapped Sans up in a tight hug, effectively lifting him up into the air and squeezing him tightly. “Why is my brother so cool and smart all the time!?”

 

Sans coughed, not wanting to burst Papyrus’s bubble by telling him that he should probably hug a little less tightly, but he really needed to breathe. “It’s nothin’ special, I just learned from the best,” he wheezed, and Papyrus set him down, expression turning stern.

 

“Yes it is special, stop doing that,” he said, hands on his hips.

 

“Stop doing… what?”

 

“That thing you do! Where you act like you’re not good at things! And try to avoid taking credit where it’s due! Just accept my heartfelt compliment, you lazybones!”

 

Sans rubbed the back of his neck, laughing lightly. “Hah. Thanks, bro.”

 

“I must go and plan for this super cool hangout that Undyne does not know about yet! Nyeh heh heh heh heh!” Huh, two more ‘heh’s than normal. He really _was_ excited for them all to hangout. Wasn’t his brother awesome?

 

Sans wasn’t worried about Frisk. Sure, they’d definitely change a thing or two this time around, no doubt about it, but time had a funny way of falling right back into place no matter what—and it had nothing to do with resets, either. The kid was definitely safe—and they couldn’t even really die, to be fair, because they could come back if they wanted. They would have to change something pretty big to make everything different than before. He’d noticed that every time he’d been in a loop through again, if he said things differently, the response might change, but if he didn’t do anything drastic, nothing much else happened. Cause and effect wasn’t dictated by a single action. It took a really big event to mess things up.

 

Example: this run through, the kid stuck around a bit longer in Snowdin, but the Underground had no pressing countdowns, nothing big on the horizon. Because of that, everything else would probably go as normal. Nothing really changed unless someone changed it.

 

Did that make sense? He shook himself from his thoughts and went to the kitchen, wondering what Papyrus possibly could have made for lunch. Imagine his eternal shock and astonishment when he found that Papyrus made spaghetti again. He loved joking that it was terrible, but by now he focused more on the small improvement he had made. Papyrus seemed proud of how he did.

 

He could remember somewhere in the back of his head that once, before a loop set in, he’d suggested that Papyrus make something else, more out of the fact that he worried for his brother’s nutritional intake than anything else. The expression Papyrus had just after the words sunk in was so crushed that during the next loop, instead he told him that he hoped Papyrus would always make spaghetti like this. Sans loved his brother too much to put his happiness on the line versus his own.

 

He was really proud of his brother. He would always be proud of his brother.

 

Both his younger and his older.

 

His memories were coming back, just… slowly. He understood things a little bit better now. After… whatever happened at the lab, he’d essentially fallen apart at the seams from the combined efforts of fear, guilt, sadness, hopelessness—the whole package. Any memory that was connected with Gaster was torn apart unless he held onto it with all his might. Papyrus hadn’t spent quite as much time around the Doc, but Sans spent almost all his time around him once he got a job in the same lab. As a result, he began forgetting pieces of himself with every memory that was sliced away. When time came around for him to make the decision to make or break himself, the moment where he realized he could either try and fight this force that was destroying him entirely until he burned out, or he could just give in to oblivion with the knowledge that things may never get better… he ended up choosing the third option. He loved the third options. His final verdict was numbness over substance. It ended up being the right decision. He gave up attachment, decided that okay, nothing he did mattered anymore. And he decided he just didn’t care about anything. He still cared about Papyrus, and it would be a cold day in Hotland before he gave up his work on the machine, but everything else fell into shambles under the duress of his indifference. He was no longer required to care so much about what happened to him. Nothing mattered. He stuck around for Papyrus, and kept them both fed and warm, but otherwise, he decided it didn’t matter what he did. And he was right. Thinking back on it, Sans felt a twinge of malicious humor at the irony of it all, that now suddenly things mattered and he still wasn’t the cause or the effect of it all.

 

He remembered that before the accident, before his lapse into… he couldn’t lie to himself, it was basically a cycle of self-loathing and depression… before that, though, he had been… happy, in a sense. Overall, mostly. Heck, he had two cool brothers, the job of his dreams—all he needed was to be on the Surface and he’d officially be the happiest guy alive. That had sure gone well, hadn’t it? He wanted to laugh.

 

Every once and a great while, before Frisk, he would remember the dream he’d once had, that he had pursued so relentlessly. Ever since he had seen a picture from the Surface, a fragment of a photo, a square of blackness dotted with yellows, dark greens and blues and violets swirling in what was labeled as ‘painting of the night sky’, peeking out from his brother’s pile of books. From that day on, he had wanted nothing more than to see the sky. Not the way everyone else did, wanting a ‘sun’ on their face, or some sort of ‘wind’ running past them, or rain unlike the kind in Waterfall, or some kind of ‘clouds’ over their heads that wasn’t the thick covering of unshifting white that occurred in Snowdin.

 

He wanted to see what the sky looked like in the dead of night. He wanted to see the stars. He wanted to see if the ‘moon’ really did change. He wanted stars to shift away from one horizon and towards the other. He wanted to be able to map out every single one. He stopped asking his brother (still fresh into his college courses on humanity) for bedtime stories about heroes and magic duels and the good guy and the bad guy, and instead he started asking about every single constellation there was to see. He memorized all of them by heart. He was the first kid in his class to be able to use his magic to make things, small sparks twinkling in midair to draw out Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces, Cancer, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, and Sagittarius all right where they were supposed to be. His brother had been so proud of him.

 

He’d never fully forgotten that dream. He still loved the stars, hungered for something other than pinpricks of light at the top of Waterfall’s endless caverns. But he’d forgotten just how proud Gaster had been of him. He was only in… what, late grade school back then? Having his cool older brother look at him with such pride was possibly the highlight of his childhood.

 

He remembered the day when Sans was still just a highschool kid, and Gaster had pulled him along to see the lab he worked at. He was energetic once, and when Gaster introduced him to his coworkers (all looking at him with smiles full of condescension), he had shaken their hands firmly and with a wide smile. He had noticed that they had looked at him funny, some short teenager walking around and talking animatedly, and Gaster had simply told him to ignore the way they whispered behind their hands. Sans could almost remember his voice now. He had said that they were simply ignorant and thought he was just a dumb child, when really Sans was as smart if not smarter than most of them. Sans remembered the growing tension, the passive aggressive tones, the hardly concealed laughter.

 

He remembered it all coming to a head with him suddenly stepping forward (and if his knees were shaking, he would never admit it), his voice raised, fists clenched to his sides, the lights of his eyes shining brightly, and he shouted, “Go ahead, laugh at me now! But one day, I’m gonna be the guy that sets us all free! You better remember me, because one day… you’ll see!” He then marched off with his dignity intact before anyone could find their voice again and laugh at him.

 

Gaster and Papyrus had both told him that he was really brave and that they were proud of him. Papyrus pulled him aside and mentioned that he was going to be brave and confident like that too one day. Gaster pulled him aside even later and told him that he was right. Sans would do great, great things one day.

 

(Would you just look at where that got him?)

 

Sans didn’t really care all that much about the resets anymore. He didn’t feel it so acutely. He didn’t care quite enough for much of anything to hurt.

 

But he still wanted to be right. He wanted to make Gaster proud. He wanted to help set everyone free.

 

_He wanted to see the stars…_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Yeah, busy week for me. Hopefully next chapter will be, I dunno... edited? Or read at all before posting? Shrug.  
> Kudos and comments make my day (no really i look at the number and cry guys), sorry that not much action is happening in these past few chapters, setup is a real bitch. Have a fabulous day! Stay safe out there!]  
> [Edit: okay, this chapter's going to have to wait until saturday at the very earliest. too much has come up and i've been doing all kinds of math and research so i can get my facts right. i have a real theory dump of a chapter coming up for you guys, but it's taking way more time than anticipated, and i've officially burned through all my pre-written stuff by now. i'm really sorry about the wait, but i want to do this right or not at all. stay cool yo]


	13. Serving Size: 1.5 oz (42g/about 1/2 dry noodle block and 1 tsb seasoning mix). Servings per Container: 2.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [*wakes up from a deep illness-induced slumber* what year is it??? OH CRAP IT'S WEDNESDAY]

 

Alphys watched the water, waiting for it to begin boiling.

 

The Royal Scientist position was always a heavy weight to her. After all, the duty of working to help an entire civilization tended to make one feel… overwhelmed. Constant questions seeping in from every corner of the Underground. She was always working hard to fix one problem or another.

 

It was still unclear to her whether or not this human would constitute as a problem.

 

The water is boiling. She placed the noodles in the pot. Four minutes until the noodles are finished.

 

She wiped her glasses on her labcoat as she pondered the events of the last two weeks. She hadn’t ever known Sans all that well personally—he was a funny guy, she’d already gathered from his occasional comments on the Underground’s social media site. He made good jokes, cared a lot about his brother. She took notice of how sometimes someone would post a status update about their computer or phone problems, and how sometimes Sans would get to it first and toss out a few words of wisdom with a tech pun. She’d once had a short bout of PM’s about anime, and he’d helped her sort out the time span of a very complex group of story arcs and even made her a (lazily drawn) chart when she’d asked. He was a cool guy, even though he mainly kept to himself.

 

Three minutes until the noodles are finished.

 

She felt oddly unsurprised to learn that he was also pretty smart, that he’d been a scientist too once, that he was competent (even if he was definitely keeping her on a need-to-know basis, which he _totally was_ ). Almost like she already knew. She pinned it on intuition, but somewhere in the back of her mind, she had the nagging feeling that she’d been told before.

 

That feeling seemed to be cropping up again as she watched the human child progressing through the Underground. Almost like watching a story arc that someone had already told her about a long time ago. Like she already knew what was happening on some level.

 

It was kinda freaking her out. She asked Sans if he had seen this human before, if they had been looping back through at all. He told her that this was their first time through, but that time must be unstable and that’s why they’re triggering déjà vu. It felt like a weak explanation, but she didn’t pressure him to talk about it anymore.

 

Two minutes until the noodles are finished.

 

She only glanced occasionally at her screens while they were in Snowdin. She realized very quickly that this human was becoming good friends with the skeleton brothers and many of the Snowdin residents. She felt unsurprised—this kid was friendly to a fault. Friendlier than humans were ever supposed to be. They showed more mercy and compassion than any record of humanity had ever shown.

 

Sans did end up recommending that she look up information on humans while she still had the time to, before they got there. Just to try and get the record straight on what was true about their history and what was false.

 

(As if he knew that she had lied about her ‘human history’ cartoons. As if he knew a lot of things that he never mentioned. She hated when he did that.)

 

(One minute until the noodles are finished.)

 

He mentioned that if she really wanted, she should dig through the old files on the previous humans that had fallen down. If anything, it was an interesting read. Might tell her something about other parts of ‘human history’ that hadn’t been covered in her shows. He mentioned that there wasn’t a whole bunch of information, but it was still pretty cool. They probably had a copy somewhere in the Royal archives or something, they had a whole bunch of information in there.

 

She didn’t ask where he had read them, and he didn’t tell her that he knew a guy whose job was to know a lot about humans.

 

Instead, she went ‘downstairs’ to see if she could dig up any documents. She brought a Tupperware full of dog food.

 

But first, the noodles were finished.

 

* * *

 

 

Frisk tried to hum along quietly with the music, vocal chords grating. They switched to whistling rather quickly. Man, this is pretty good music. The writer of these tunes is really, really talented.

 

“I’m sorry I don’t have any of my own music to play you on CDs… If you wanted to listen, I mean… which you probably don’t, because, my music isn’t all that good… oh no, I’m sorry… I don’t wanna pressure you to listen to my stuff… that was really rude of me, oh no… I’m so sorry…” Napstablook groaned sadly, beginning to drift away again. Frisk waved it off and patiently waited for them to speak again. “I have more music on my computer, some stuff that I wrote myself, but I don’t think my headphones are going to fit you… you could try, I mean, but… you’re really small… that was rude, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything… I’ve probably offended you now, oh no…”

 

Frisk just smiled at them and wordlessly took the headphones off of the forlorn ghost, and as expected, the massive things were too big to fit properly on their head. They ended up hanging it around their neck instead, where it threatened to phase through their shoulders. “Do you have more music on your computer? I’m sure it’s really good and I’d like it a lot,” Frisk signed in earnest when the specter finally tore their eyes from the ground. They had learned the first time through that Napstablook wasn’t quite so fluent in sign language, and so they spelled out the words individually. It took longer, but they really wanted to see if they could make this ghost happy this run-through. An impossible task, probably, but worth each and every bit of effort put into it.

 

Napstablook blinked in surprise. “Oh… really? You aren’t just saying that because you want me to feel better… right?” Frisk smiled wider in reply. “Oh… well, I have some stuff I made a few months back and never burned onto a CD… do you wanna hear that?” Frisk nodded. “It’s older stuff, and I’ve gotten better… so it’s not as good… but if you still wanna hear it, I’m okay with that… I’m sorry, that sounds rude too… oh man…” Napstablook decided to just stop talking and turned on the music.

 

Frisk listened happily to the tunes that emanated from the headphones, but as the song continued (about six kinds of spooky and cool) they began thinking about something else. They waved their hand slightly to garner the ghost’s attention.

 

“Where do ghosts come from in the Underground?” they asked. “I thought monsters turned to dust when they died.”

 

Napstablook blinked slowly, expression approaching surprised (which appeared most distressed than anything else, really). “Oh. Why do you ask? If you don’t mind me asking… that was worded stupid, um… pretend I worded that better please.”

 

“They’re the only kind of monster that isn’t corporeal.” Frisk had to pause to remember how to spell the word ‘corporeal’, but got there eventually.

 

“Oh… yeah… ghosts are made the same as other monsters… but instead of being made of positive emotions… we’re made of memories…” Napstablook saw Frisk’s confused expression and groaned. “I’m sorry, you don’t know anything about monsters, do you? Oh… I mean… of course you know things about monsters… but just not most things… no, that’s worse… oh no…”

 

“Monsters aren’t just born?” Frisk asked before Napstablook got discouraged and fled the scene.

 

“No… monsters are created from strong love between two or more other monsters… or the strong will and passion of one monster… some monsters give birth, but most of us… aren’t made so much of biology, and are more made of magic… but ghosts are made of strong memories of an individual. Instead of having two or more strong Souls that each give a piece away to begin a new Soul… one Soul is being drained of energy and the drained energy makes a new Soul… and we’re weaker unless we’re corporeal, but… it’s a different process. Or sometimes a Soul becomes so weak that it can’t be corporeal… so it becomes a ghost. It’s weird… I just talked a whole lot… I’m sorry.”

 

“I didn’t know any of that. What about other incorporeal things?” Frisk signed, slowly, torturously. Man, spelling things out wasn’t easy. If only there was some way to sign out full words instead, a kind of standardized form of communication for people who rarely or could not use their voice. _Oh, wait._ Frisk reigned in the sarcastic voice in their mind, chiding themselves for being bitter. Optimism is key. “Why are they ghosty?”

 

“Oh… well, the other way that a Soul can be made… is when one monster really, really wants it… with all of their heart… sort of like how we use magic. We really, really need to want to do it… or it doesn’t work as easy. You can force it too, but… it’s harder. So if a monster is trying to make something brand new that lasts, it takes energy right from their Soul… but if they take too little, it doesn’t work, and it’s incorporeal. That’s why a lot of monsters wait to have a partner before trying to make a new Soul… if they mess it up… it’s not good… that sounded morbid… I apologize…” They looked at the ground, voice dropping to a melancholy murmur.

 

“That’s really neat,” Frisk signed. Napstablook said nothing, although they clearly did see Frisk’s hands moving. They both stood in silence for a few moments.

 

“Wanna lay on the ground and feel like garbage?” Napstablook offered quietly, already clearly steeling themselves for rejection.

 

Frisk nodded with a smile. A wide, cheerful smile.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [I wasn't informed until halfway through editing that Blooky has neutral pronouns. :0 Wowza golly! Cooilo! How many 80's phrases can I use before I am stopped? Nobody knows!  
> But yeah, my excuse for the chapterless week is illness plus (c) Real Life Trash. All the young children out there, eat your veggies and drink your milk. (Haha I'm kidding if you're eleven this website is a bad place for you leave before it's too late.) Have a cool week hopefully not young children, stay healthy. Seriously.]


	14. Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene III, L. 140-141

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [I have concluded that Papyrus would LOVE Shakespeare.]

 

*You bought the Cloudy Glasses and Torn Notebook.

 

Oddly enough, this time around Frisk was looking at everything just a little more carefully. It seemed backwards; they’d already technically seen everything, why look again? Well, this time, they could afford to; they had no rush, but for the ever-echoing end goal of “Find the end” that pushed them forwards. They’d found it once; now it was a task for the sake of completion, finding answers that didn’t matter to the end goal, making choices without effects.

 

 In some ways, it was a mix of powerlessness and control. The end goal would always be there, and one way or another, Frisk wouldn’t stop until they got there. They would never, ever stop until they found their ending. Maybe it was the whole bit about ‘destiny’, or ‘fate’. They weren’t sure they believed in those. But for some reason, Frisk was here. And for some reason, Frisk was doing this. And for some reason, they couldn’t simply stop. They felt no inclination to stop, so it wasn’t a problem, but… they knew that nobody would care in the long run if they carried a piece of snowman to the ends of the earth, or played a piano and completed a puzzle, or carried an umbrella for someone who couldn’t do it themselves, or laid on the ground to think about the universe. However, Frisk did care. Maybe it didn’t matter to anyone else if they did these things. Maybe nobody else would really care. Heck, maybe even the person Frisk helped would forget it within the day. It still mattered to Frisk, somehow. Somewhere in their Soul was a goodness that couldn’t really die. It would take a lot to change that.

 

Frisk chatted with Gerson, and thought about prophecies. An angel that has seen the Surface that would free them, an angel that has seen the Surface would kill them, maybe both, or maybe it was all made up and prophecies were dumb and superstition was exactly that. Frisk wasn’t sure. They felt as though it wasn’t their place to decide. That wasn’t their call. They thought it was still very interesting though.

 

Frisk peered at the two items they purchased before they placed them in their bag. In it already were a toy knife, a glove, a bandana, a dusty tutu, and ballet shoes, ribbons already around their hand. Frisk wanted to ask Alphys if she knew how these had gotten down here, so far from the dump. Were they important…?

 

Maybe Frisk would never know. They either would or they wouldn’t. Existence was simple that way, as long as you didn’t think too hard about it.

 

Frisk didn’t _seem_ young.

 

A jolt. They weren’t sure why they had thought that suddenly. They were gradually becoming more and more aware of their internal monologue. They were coming to the realization that maybe they just hadn’t thought about it much, but they were kinda sarcastic sometimes and that was fine but sometimes it was frankly unnecessary and rude and they felt bad but it was funny so they didn’t? Conflicted emotions, conflicted thoughts. Frisk felt like they were close to remembering something, or learning something. Probably more existence junk.

 

Frisk really needed to be more social.

 

Frisk wracked their brain to try and remember what comes next. They’d had their second confrontation with Undyne, they passed Gerson, next was… next was… were they already about to have the confrontation with Monster Kid? That had been heartbreaking the first time around, to see him trying so, so hard to hate them. Frisk wasn’t sure just what they’d do this time around.

 

No, wait. Not Monster Kid yet. First was the light puzzle, and off the beaten path was the place of great confusion and horror and slight hilarity but also more confusion because its mere existence was a Digimon card in a poker tournament.

 

They walked through the cavern, the silt underneath their feet soft and muffling their footsteps. The light puzzle was annoying the first time around, but now Frisk knew what they needed to do. They could do this. They’d be fine.

 

They felt both incredibly compelled and increasingly repelled from the odd, secretive path that they knew led to Temmie Village. Well, maybe this time around they could afford getting her to college. Might as well.

 

It smelled like moss and water.

 

* * *

 

 

Sans took a moment to appreciate the sock before he left the house.

 

Ah, yes. The sock. Source of almost a whole week’s worth of fun and over a month’s worth of laughter under his breath. For now, he and Papyrus were under a strict policy of ‘not talking about it because whoever talked about it lost’. He wasn’t positive, but he was pretty sure this whole thing started with Papyrus getting a little irked by him never picking up his own things, and so wanted to make Sans do it himself, for once. Sans fully intended for the sock to remain there. In fact, his plan was to wait a few more days, and if no more notes appeared, he would start cleaning up everything else in the house _except_ for the sock. He figured he should start his cleaning with the rock’s diet. Sprinkles would never give way to a healthy, nutrient-rich rock. Ig-needs-his greens… no, no, that one was a stretch. That’s not getting said out loud. Uh, he would need to _zinc_ about it, but eating just candy never _lead_ to anything good. No, that’s too sciencey, no… Screw it. He’d just say that eating a healthy diet _rocks_ , then Papyrus would call him a hypocrite and he’d promise to a- _stone_ for his sins. Papyrus made it too easy for him sometimes.

 

He wished he could spent the day sitting on the couch and coming up with rock puns. He had to go and look through his stuff in the lab, though. He wasn’t positive, but… he was pretty sure that more papers had been disappearing. He needed to sit down and do a proper inventory while he still had time.

 

He’d started that earlier in the day, and he was surprised about some of the papers he’d found. Some of it was probably attributed to him not having properly looked at a lot of the papers before.

 

Before he left, he went to the monitor Alphys had set up to watch the kid with and checked up on where they were. Oh wow, already to Weirdtown, USA, home of the creatures that prove there is no God.

 

In hindsight, that one was a little over the edge of sarcasm and bordering on dickish, but those things seriously creeped him out. He was the only being in the Underground that had reasoning to be able to mess with the fabric of reality and logic. _Maybe_ Alphys just a little bit, and the kid was a human and that’s free game, the weed didn’t count anymore (worth mention anyways), but Temmies? Those things were hiding something, he just knew it, no matter how many times Papyrus told him he was just being paranoid he _knew for a fact that there was something wrong there, no, shut up they were so creepy do not even start with this._

 

He got to his lab and realized, looking at the papers strewn about on the ground, that odds were he’d be done with this in about an hour at most, as long as he didn’t get distracted.

 

He sat down and got distracted.

 

He couldn’t help it! He was getting back to the _really_ old papers, from way back when G was in collage still, and most of it was information about humans. For some reason, humans were a topic that always really appealed to him, at least from a scientific standpoint. No magic, held together only by chemical reactions, baked by evolution for millennia? They were his definition of cool. There weren’t a ton of human text books that survived falling into the underground—mostly scraps, damp bits that had running ink and crumpled away under the spray of the waterfall, but occasionally one or two survived mostly intact by some miracle. He remembered the time he’d spent as a kid with Papyrus after school just rummaging in the dump for cool things. Papyrus loved the toy cars, the action figures detailing what humans looked like, clothes from the surface, once he even found a mostly-working bike. They were too short to ride it. Sans spent more time looking for pictures, books, human food (with lists of ingredients he didn’t understand), things that told stories about what human life was _like_.

 

As far as he could tell, it wasn’t all that different, really. Just brighter and more fun in general, except for wars. Humans really seemed to like wars, huh? He’d spent a lot of time wondering how someone could kill someone of their own kind so easily. They were all humans, all with their own lives and thoughts. He’d always been taught either that humans were evil or that they didn’t matter, so of course his classmates and the other kids didn’t sympathize, assumed that they just had a bloodlust like that. But he wasn’t so sure. He found books, and he knew the stories weren’t true, works of fiction, but… he couldn’t help but sympathize with humans. Look at these pages upon pages of them falling in love, saving the day, beating the bad guy, making the final stand, saving each other. Humans couldn’t _all_ be bad… right?

 

Papyrus called him crazy. Humans _slaughtered_ us, Papyrus said, looking angry and confused. And Sans felt like _he_ was the little kid in that moment, not Papyrus, because he suddenly felt very small when Papyrus looked at him that way, with such distaste, with such utter befuddlement, like he was stupid, like he had to be joking about this, like he was crazy, he _wasn’t crazy_. Papyrus asked him how he could think that the beings that were the cause of all their suffering could possibly be good? How could humans be good if they killed so many of the monsters? How could humans be good if they attacked them suddenly, all at once, for no reason? _How?_

 

And Sans had snapped back at his little brother that he was a little kid and of course he couldn’t understand, and Papyrus snapped back that if Sans was older, shouldn’t he know better than to betray his own kind to side with their enemies, and Sans had yelled that maybe the world wasn’t that black and white and Papyrus was just a dumb little kid, and Papyrus had yelled back that this wasn’t a grey area, this was a _genocide_ and he couldn’t _believe_ what Sans was trying to say here.

 

They had yelled until they both wanted to cry, they yelled until their neighbors got concerned and called their older brother, they yelled until their brother had gotten home and broken them up, because now they were grappling, both too angry to think, both too confused to wonder what was the right course of action. Neither was sure who had shoved first. Neither cared. But as Gaster shoved them both apart, Sans saw how Papyrus clutched at his arm defensively and he felt himself aching everywhere. And as they both stood, poised to yell again, scared to fight, rage melting into shock melting into bitter unhappiness, Gaster turned to him.

 

“Sans, it is never okay to tell someone they’re ignorant just because they’re younger than you. Youth and ignorance aren’t the same thing. Sometimes, young people can be very wise. Sometimes, older people are very ignorant. You know better than to yell at your little brother like that over something like this, and should be ashamed of yourself,” he had said. And Sans had never felt so ashamed of himself before in his life.

 

“Papyrus, never assume that anyone is entirely evil; there is no such thing. You might never find someone entirely good, and you might even find someone who you can’t see even the smallest speck of goodness in; but there is good in everyone. Don’t assume that an entire group is evil based on the poor actions of several. It is both unreasonable and unkind to do so.” And Papyrus stared at his shoes and he looked ready to cry and Sans was too because god, he didn’t mean to hurt his brother’s feelings, and he didn’t realize that he just didn’t know better, had never been taught anything else. Of course he thought humans were evil. Why shouldn’t he?

 

“I’m sorry,” he heard, and Papyrus was looking at his shoulder and not his face, and his hands were balled up in his sleeves, and there were tears on his face, not from anger or pain now, from regret. More of a sob than words, Papyrus repeated, over and over, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m _sorry—“_

 

Sans stepped forward and hugged his brother as tightly as he could, murmuring his own apologies softly. Gaster sighed with relief behind them.

 

Sans looked down at the old file in his hands.

 

A list, it looked like. It seemed to be a record of the date and route that every fallen human had taken upon entering the Underground. Six had died while wandering the caverns, either in battle or otherwise, and the seventh had befriended the Royal Family, eventually rising to a position as a beloved member of the Underground, then dying suddenly due to ingestion of poisonous flowers.

 

That was just a bit before his time, though. Around the time Gaster was born, he thought.

 

He wondered why it was always children that fell into the Underground. Maybe it was fate, if fate was real. Maybe it was coincidence. Maybe they were missing something.

 

Ah, well. He had a human down here now that he could talk to, no need to waste the opportunity. Speaking of which, after a glance at the monitor, he determined that the kid was nearly to the fight with Undyne. He had to have a quick word with Papyrus, then go and wait (fast fake asleep) for Undyne to go by. He had it all figured out.

 

Sans wondered, still, as he put papers back in their folders, about a lot of things. He wondered if what the kid had told him was true. If everyone really missed him.

 

He went to the drawer by the door. He’d made a promise to himself back when he and Papyrus first moved to Snowdin, promised that no matter what, he would hang on for Papyrus. He wondered for years (centuries, maybe, because time never did behave when it came to Sans), is it worth it? Not like it’ll even matter. It’ll all just get reset again, won’t it? Everything will just go back to the way it was, like nothing had even happened.

 

(He remembered the countless times that he’d sat in the forest and thought about how easy it would be to just… lay there. And never get up. He remembered the many times he’d ended up above the Core, staring at the lava that made him remember everything he’d lost, everything that had been stolen from him, everything that he’d thrown away. He would wonder how long it would take someone to notice that he was gone. He remembered the few times that he’d been so close. Just his heels. Leaning forward. And he couldn’t do it, because he had at least one person to take care of still. Just the one. It would make him a coward, running away from his problems. He remembered thinking to himself, hell, never was much of an athlete, can’t run from myself forever. He remembered going home and Papyrus greeting him and teasing him for being lazy and excitedly, enthusiastically, ecstatically telling him about all of the ordinary, normal things that happened like nothing had happened quite so wonderfully, perfectly. He always felt guilty nowadays.)

 

He looked in the photo album from the drawer, the very back, found that picture. He looked at everyone there, and thought for a minute, selfishly, about what they would say to him if they could see him again, for just a moment. Always an interesting thought, isn’t it, what people would say if they realized they only had one more shot to talk to someone.

 

His hands gripped the book tightly.

 

He thought about what Undyne would say to him. He wasn’t sure why he’d thought of her first, maybe because he was about to go and get yelled at by her for ‘sleeping’ on the job. She would probably tell him that he should’ve brought her as backup to the fight. Just then, he remembered that nobody knew he’d died after fighting the grasshole (heh, that’s a good one, he should use that some time). She would probably call him a jerk, then. Yell at him for leaving Papyrus all alone. Maybe hit him. He’d have deserved it, on some level, probably.

 

He breathed in, breathed out.

 

Alphys would probably have tried and asked about the Doc a little more. Get some facts straight, maybe, figure out the puzzle. She might’ve even talked tried to talk him out of it. He wondered if it would’ve worked, what she would’ve said to make him quit. Maybe anything could’ve been enough. He really was a coward. He didn’t want to admit how scared he had been.

 

He felt tired. He _always_ felt tired, but he never really… _felt_ it.

 

He felt himself purposefully skipping over the big one for now. Grillby would be _pissed._ All those times he’d given Sans a few syllables of advice, all that time he’d told Sans that the tab could wait, it didn’t matter right now, just go home and talk to your brother, okay? And then he would fight a time-warping flower demon thing then to a pirouette into the Core. Grillby might’ve even yelled at him. Sans felt the laugh building, a dry exhale, then is was gone. Grillby had cried. How had he forgotten about all those people who cared about him? Who he cared about, too?

 

He wanted to rip the pages out of the album.

 

He allowed his mind to drift for a millisecond to what Papyrus would say to him, and tried to shake it off, because the shame choked him, the guilt threatened to suffocate him. The dog couple, Lesser and Greater, maybe even Doggo. They’d all be upset, probably. Well, actually, maybe not Doggo. Doggo _really_ didn’t like him. He’d made a few friends performing his crappy, on-the-fly standup at the MTT Resort, he noticed a couple of them in there too. He couldn’t imagine what on earth Mettaton was doing there. Maybe Alphys had dragged him? Sans remembered one time he’d met the glambot and made a few robot puns and Mettaton had been really confused because Sans didn’t care even a little bit about who he was. Sans had then proceeded to make a long, convoluted joke then leave the room, giving finger guns and managing to get away after stealing a whole basket of fries. He was pretty sure that Alphys had just dragged him there.

 

Sans scraped at the corner of the picture, caught at the edge and in one fluid motion, tore if from the page. Didn’t matter anymore. Maybe it didn’t matter in the first place, maybe it’d mattered all along, but it sure didn’t matter now, he knew that much.

 

And it would keep not mattering, because this time around, they would make it. Everyone would make it. Everyone would live and the kid would go home and it would all turn out alright.

 

(He didn’t think about how upset Papyrus would be once they were gone. He didn’t think about how for them to leave, they would have to kill Asgore. He didn’t think about how the Underground would be left there, kingless. He didn’t know what everyone would do.)

 

(He didn’t think about it. He didn’t think about it. He didn’t think about it.)

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [We're getting to pre-written chapters now, so quality's probably going to rise pretty soon here, I promise it won't be trash for much longer once I actually have TIME AGAIN. Oh, also, character development is fun to write. Hyped for what's coming. (40,000 words in and i'm still deciding on how this is going to end ^^') Have a good week yay!]


	15. 9999999

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [getting to the fun part]

 

***You are filled with detemmienation.**

 

Frisk can’t help but grin at their own joke, as well as at the absurdity of the place they’d found in a previous timeline. They look at the hole in the wall, and feel a moment of confusion and amusement as their inner monologue does an impression of the monster peering at them. Frisk pondered for a moment if perhaps they were losing their mind, and decided that it was a very distinct possibility given the place they were in. Wow. There are truly no words to explain Temmie Village.

 

Frisk walked to the shop, and winced at just how loud and bubbly the Temmie there was. Without waiting for even a moment, Frisk pulled a pouch from their bag, and dumped out onto the table 5,000 gold pieces.

 

They couldn’t help but laugh aloud as the Temmie jumped around her booth, looking absolutely thrilled beyond comprehension. She swore to make them proud.

 

* * *

 

 

“Gerson!”

 

The elderly tortoise didn’t so much as move, continuing to sit back in his chair, pith helmet pulled over his eyes.

 

“Gerson, you old coot, I know you’re awake!”

 

The slightest twitch in his lip, otherwise sitting completely still.

 

“ _Gerson!_ ” Accentuated with the dull ‘tunk’ of a crabapple bouncing off his shell.

 

“Ahhh!” He sat upright with a general creak from his joints, cap nearly falling off in his haste. “Alright, alright, young lady, wahaha! I’m awake! Sheesh! Can’t take a joke, can you?”

 

Undyne crossed her arms, armor clanking as she did so. “I’m kind of in a rush, Gerson, so if you don’t mind can you please—“

 

“Well, well, well. Sounds like quite the big important mission there, Miss Captain of the Royal Guard,” Gerson cut in. “Perhaps you would like to ask me that question again without a storm drain covering your face?”

 

Undyne removed her helmet after a moment of consideration, showing off quite the impressive scowl. “Gerson, I really—“

 

“If you’re in such a hurry, perhaps some of my good old Sea Tea would help you. Makes you go faster, you know,” he hummed. He was already pulling teabags from behind his desk. “It’s also a wonder for plenty of other things! Soothes cramps, achy bones, achy joints, clears the mind, brings in good harvests—“

 

“Gerson.”

 

“Helps in fertility, assists in seeing the future, good luck with money, good luck in war—“

 

“Gerson.” Undyne tapped her fingers against her armor impatiently as he poured the cup of tea.

 

“Helps with test scores, heals burns, gives you better luck with ladies who happen to be scaly, yellow, and wear glasses—“

 

“ _Gerson!”_ Undyne yelped, and the old man laughed.

 

“Wahaha, just making sure you’re paying attention!” he said with a grin. He held out the cup of tea to her, and for one, two, three seconds she looked like she might smack it away.

 

She took the cup gingerly and sipped, sitting down in the small, rickety old stool beside the counter.

 

“Now that we’re all settled down, how about you tell me why you’re all worked up?” he asked, sipping his own cup thoughtfully.

 

“You know that human I asked you about earlier today? Striped shirt?” she asked.

 

“Eh? Can you repeat that?” Gerson asked, tipping his head as if trying to listen harder.

 

“The human I asked about earlier," she repeated. “This morning, when I came over here? I asked you if you’d seen a human today.”

 

“A human? Hmm… I don’t remember you asking about any humans,” Gerson said after a moment of deliberation. “Old age, does a terror on the memories! Goin’ senile, I am.”

 

“Alright, alright, you geezer,” Undyne said, but she was smiling into her cup. “But I did ask you earlier. I distinctly remember you telling me that I was crazy for thinking that a human could be in the Underground.”

 

“Did I now?” The twitch of his lip betrayed him.

 

“You have seen the kid, haven’t you!” Undyne said triumphantly, jumping to her feet.

 

“If I have, then I sure wouldn’t be telling you about it,” Gerson replied sharply. “Have you looked at the thing? They’re practically a toddler, and here you are on a headhunt after them! They’re even younger than that last one.” He gulped down some tea. “If they hurt anyone, maybe you would have a point here, fightin’ them. Haven’t hurt a fly. Human before ‘em was similar, in that way.”

 

Undyne blinked at him, expertly camouflaging most of her surprise, but it was still evident in the pause before she spoke. “You remember the last human?”

 

“Not many do. Crafty, the kid was. Snuck around, drew maps, took notes, and stayed hidden. It was back all those years ago when I was still fighting, still trying to protect us all.” He scowled. “Wasn’t until then that I realized there was nothing to protect us from. That kid couldn’t have been a day older than you were, back when you thought I was a hero, followed me around like a baby duckling. I caught them all by themselves in the fading lantern room, squinting at that little notebook of theirs, tryin’ to read in the dark.”

 

“What’d you do when you found them?” It was just like all those years ago, her eyes wide with wonder, drinking in stories told by a seasoned veteran who’d seen a hundred battles.

 

“I killed ‘em,” Gerson quipped, putting his empty cup on the saucer. “Wish I didn’t. Especially after I saw that there book they had. Journaled the whole journey! Kid was terrified, but had only ever struck in defense one time—then never again. Charted out how to avoid encounters for each and every monster. Meek, they were, but smart.”

 

“They hurt someone?” Undyne asked, a flash of anger in her eyes.

 

“One. There was some dummy—and I mean that literally _and_ figuratively, mind you—challenged them to a fistfight, wouldn’t let them leave, floatin’ around, wouldn’t calm down no matter what. They bopped ‘em away and got the hell out of dodge. Then I killed them with one swing of that old hammer, gave the Soul to Fluffybuns.” Gerson filled up his cup again, took a long sip. “Did you know humans don’t turn to dust?”

 

“They don’t?” Undyne asked, eyebrows furrowing.

 

“Nope. They lie there, and it takes a few minutes to stop breathing, then they’re gone. But the body stays.” Gerson shivered. “Felt like the thing was staring at me. I wasn’t no hero, killin’ that kid. Never was. Strutted around, listened to old Fluffybuns, squashed the petty revolution after the royal kids died and the Queen disappeared. That was before your time, but it was a nightmare. That’s when the whole ‘collecting Souls’ business started, y’know. Not sure what kids these days are learning in history classes! Shouldn’t your teacher be telling you all this?”

 

“I’ve been out of school for years, Gerson,” Undyne reminded him gently, leaning her elbows on her knees, her teacup abandoned on the table.

 

“Right, right.” He nodded. “I forgot.”

 

A few moments passed in silence.

 

“I really am getting old, aren’t I?” the tortoise asked quietly. Undyne nodded. “I gotta treasure these moments, y’know? One day you’re in school and praying to be strong enough to join the Warrior’s Guild, next you’re patrolling in the dark with some fiery little girl babbling on ten feet behind you, and before you know it you’re sitting in an old cranny of a cavern and wondering what all you’ve done. Now, that ain’t saying I’m not proud of my life, mind you,” he said, cutting off Undyne, who looked ready to speak. “I’m proud of what I’ve done. Fluffybuns mentioned my name being in history books somewhere, founding member of the Guard once the Guild got disbanded in the chaos. I’ve protected order, saved a few dozen-odd monsters in my time. But that’s not what I’m most proud of, course.”

 

His hands shook slightly as he poured the tea, age bringing on a tremor in his fingers. Undyne felt a pang in her chest when she noticed it. “Is it the time you saved the newborn Prince from falling off the top of the castle?” she asked with a smile.

 

Gerson grinned, putting down the teapot. “Where’d you hear that old story?”

 

“Asgore. He came by the Waterfall school not long back, and he had a nice chat with me on the walk to and from.”

 

“Well, that was my fault to start with!” Gerson chortled. “If I’d been watching the rascal, he wouldn’t have gotten as far as the tower stairs! Queen nearly strangled me after she found out what almost happened.”

 

“With relief or anger?”

 

“Both!”

 

Undyne grinned as she sipped her tea. “What was the Queen like?”

 

“Scary as all hell, and I’d bet my beans that she could’ve beaten anyone in a fight just as good as Asgore. Better, even, since she’s not quite as bad of a softy! Real motherly type, never saw a child better cared for than the Prince. Then I went and almost ruined it!” His smile faded. “Blamed herself for what happened, I think. Not all the way, because she was one of the most sensible folk I’ve ever met, but she still felt responsible, I suppose. Asgore declaring war was the final straw before she up and left. Haven’t seen her in quite some time.” He frowned. “What was I saying before? Went on a tangent.”

 

“You’re proud.” Undyne prompted gently.

 

“Ah! That! Yes!” Gerson said, nodding. “Rambling old man, I know, I know. But what I was saying before, what I’m most proud of. I’ve got someone just as strong—hell, stronger—than I ever was taking over for when I pass. Taught them all I know, and I know that the Underground is safe, even if these old arms can’t hold the hammer of justice anymore. You’ll do great things, won’t make the same mistakes I did.”

 

Undyne laughed quietly. “I could never live up to what you’ve done, Gerson. A hot-headed kid like me? Hardly made it up the ranks of the Guard, and who knows who’ll try and upstage me. I mean, who wouldn’t try and take on the first female captain in history?”

 

“Don’t you dare talk like that, missy,” Gerson chided. “Remember what I just now said about the Queen? You bein’ a girl’s got nothing to do with it, never has, never will. Don’t let a little old thing like that get in the way. Besides, hot-headed is the pessimist’s view of passion and conviction. That’s what got you up the ranks, not your training, not your strength, not that you knew me to help you hobble into place. Your passion’s what won. And just you wait; pretty soon, you’ll save us all with that passion.” He nodded meaningfully at the symbol on the wall behind him. Triangles, circle, wings. Undyne blinked, eyes darting between him and the symbol. “But just remember a thing or two about justice while you’re at it. It doesn’t matter if you can swing a sword best; I taught you more than just how to win a fight. Takes a good heart to help people. Don’t forget that.”

 

Undyne stood up, putting down her cup decisively. “You’re right… yeah, you’re right.” Her shoulders fell. “But this kid’s the last Soul we need. If they die, we can walk free. You can see the Surface.”

 

“What for? I got stars and I’ve got apples, I’ve got flowers and grass and rivers, nothin’ on the Surface that I need seein’. I’ve seen an awful lot in my life already anyways, and don’t need sunlight to tan my hide. Being a Guardsman did that enough.” He took the empty cup from her, stashed it under the counter again. “And if you’re so determined to fight the anklebiter, go ahead. I’m not stopping you. I just thought it’s worth mentioning that every life is important, worth saving. Ask the kid about their day. Chat about their favorite tea. If you still wanna play big important Miss Captain of the Royal Guard after all that and shove a spear in their gullet, be my guest. But the kid’s awful nice, terribly polite. Might be worth the chat.”

 

Undyne huffed, hefting her spear and tugging her helmet over her ponytail. She spent a few moments tucking it in right. “Not interested. This is my duty. I can’t let that human get to Asgore, I have to do my job.”

 

“Alright, alright. Well, best of luck, then,” Gerson said, tipping his helmet at her as the left.

 

The old tortoise listened to the sound of metal boots stomping off, the way it echoed in the cavern, reminding him of times long passed. He exhaled softly. “Bought you some time, kid. Make the most of it.” Leaning back in his chair, he picked out some of his favorite stars on the cavern ceiling, weak eyes making them blur together until they almost seemed to twinkle. He thought about everything he had long forgotten and allowed himself to fall asleep.

 

* * *

 

 

Somewhere in Waterfall, there was a door. Some thought it was a myth, imaginary, a hallucination. Perhaps it was. But there was, occasionally, one who would find it.

 

Never looking for it, always walking and finding this door, existing opposite to what previously was there. It didn’t seem to fit the place it was in, not sticking out like a sore thumb, but rather, a single black thread in a golden quilt. Odd, in the circumstances, but hardly noticeable.

 

The door was never opened. Monsters had an innate sense of magic, as most living things have perceptions of being watched or of changes in pressure. They could sense magic. Take it from within themselves and wield it as a weapon or as a tool. They could feel when another monster was present in this way, and the stronger they were, the easier it got.

 

Monsters would see this door sometimes, unusual, improbable, and they would feel not magic inside that room. They would feel the absence of anything at all. A swirling, shifting, massive _lack_ of magic, expansive, infinite. And so, rightfully, they would be afraid. They would run from the door. Few ever saw it, as many rules of space would need to be broken, altered—but once in a great while, one would find this door. And none ever peered inside.

 

Somewhere, a rule was broken, shattered, in space. Never able to be repaired, never able to be reset. The golden quilt of the universe was torn at this one thread, and a patch was placed upon it to fix it.

 

THIS NEXT EXPERIMENT

 

**SEEMS VERY**

 

_**VERY** _

 

_**I N T E R E S T I N G .** _

 

~~**_9 9 9 9 9 9 9_ ** ~~

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [gotten to the fun part. also i realized belatedly that i forgot to add undyne/alphys to the tags, my bad. thought they were already up there :| the only pairing that matters]


	16. fun="21.000000"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [i will explain later just bear with me]

 

Frisk stared up at the figure silhouetted against the approximation of sky. Even this second time around, Undyne looked incredibly intimidating. Frisk spent a moment appreciating how awesome she was. The wind howled, and she stood at the precipice, the single point of border between opposing forces, water and fire, damp and singed, chilling melancholy and heated recollection. It was all very poetic. Some part of the young human’s mind murmured that the small wind tunnel created in this part of the Underground was due to the two regions attempting to find equilibrium. In all actuality, the Core sucking up so much of the heat to turn it into energy was the only reason that there wasn’t a slow and steady process of a kind of localized ‘global warming’.

 

Frisk came to the conclusion that the sound of the wind howling was, technically speaking of course, cool as hell.

 

They took a step forward.

 

“That’s it, then…!” Undyne said. Despite her best efforts, Frisk could just slightly hear the underlying tone of excitement in her voice. “No more running away!” She spun, and her magic sparked in the air, her grin wide. “HERE I COME!” She leapt from her peak, and Frisk only barely managed to twist to one side, catch the spear that flew inches from their nose. Undyne boxed them in, her magic sparking around their ankles, keeping them in place. Frisk looked down at themselves, and the strong green glow lit up their torso. They looked up at her again as she pulled a spear from over her shoulder, weapon materializing under her gloved hand. _“En guarde!”_

 

For a split second, Frisk held the spear out before them, point facing the warrior in attack, but they decisively turned it sideways, now holding it more like a shield. Undyne grinned, satisfied, curious, thrilled, and more than anything looking like this was the best day of her life.

 

Somewhere in the back of their mind, they hummed, “ATK 7, DEF 0. The heroine that NEVER gives up.”

 

“As long as you’re green, you CAN’T ESCAPE!” Undyne roared, grin flashing. “Unless you learn to face danger head-on… you won’t last a second against me!”

 

Frisk prepared for the spears they knew would be coming for them any second, but suddenly, they felt a twinge of curiosity. Undyne flicked her wrist, and three spears soared towards Frisk. In that moment, Frisk wondered what exactly would happen if…

 

Frisk turned around.

 

The spears hitting their back hurt, of course. Like the thump of a snowball against the bare back of your head, it was jarring and slightly alarming. But Frisk simply turned away from them, holding their ground, ignoring the points connecting and shattering on impact.

 

Looking back up, Undyne looked confused now. Frisk smiled, standing and waiting for the next attack. Sparing her. “When I said face towards danger… I meant face towards the bullets,” she said, flatly.

 

Another volley. Frisk turned away from the attacks, head held high as they made contact with their torso. Frisk smiled at Undyne. Her eye twitched. “Look. I gave you a spear to block the bullets with.” Frisk spun the spear in question like a baton, still smiling happily. “Do I have to explain this any more clearly?”

 

Another volley, back turned, arms crossed. At the end of it, Frisk wiped the sweat from their forehead, staggering slightly. They gulped down a Cinnamon Bunny quickly, felt strength pumping through their veins again. Still smiling away. On the other hand, Undyne looked like she was about to drop the spears and strangle Frisk with her bare hands.

  
“ _What are you doing?”_  she yelled angrily. “Just FACE ME! It’s not hard!”

 

Frisk’s smile didn’t waver for even a second as more spears collided with their back. The pain had already faded into a kind of background noise, as now they were watching her face morph into many incredibly interesting shapes. Why didn’t they think of this sooner? This is hilarious!

 

Undyne gritted her teeth, positively seething with rage. She forced herself to remain calm as she spat out the next few words. “I wanted this to be a fair fight. I thought if I beat you like this... It'd truly show strong monsters can be. But _now?!_ I DON'T CARE!” She threw her spear to the ground more out of anger than anything, summoning another one instantly. “I'M NOT YOUR FREAKING KINDERGARTEN TEACHER! Unless your kindergarten teacher... DOES THIS!”

 

Frisk’s eyes widened, and they spun on the spot, raising the spear in defense from the barrage of attacks that came next. They managed to weasel through the attack unscathed, but they realized that they should probably stop messing around at that point. Undyne looked taken aback by their sudden skill, grinning widely. “Not bad!” she cheered, showing off her very, very pointy teeth. “Then how about _this!?”_

 

Frisk was starting to remember why this battle was so terrifying.

 

* * *

 

_The child’s eyes surveyed the snow in front of them._

_They suppressed a shiver as they took a tentative step from the doorway, eyes narrowed at the sudden brightness of the place. The cold bit at every exposed piece of tanned skin, and they were glad to have their gloves to cover their hands, their bandanna to cover their face. They inhaled slowly, exhaled slowly, and took off at a sprint again._

_The idea was, of course, to find the other end of the tunnel as quickly as possible. Shove through every obstacle before anything had the chance to attack. It would be easy, and if they were lucky, their mom and dad wouldn’t be too angry with them. Just keep moving. Never stop moving._

_They felt their Soul being tugged into battle again, and they spun, preparing to duck and weave through the obstacles. Was that a wolf? Didn’t matter. The child registered a flash of blue. A blue attack? They tried to duck away, but as they moved it clipped them, sending sharp pain reverberating up their spine. They attempted to run, ducking and dodging, but each swing of—a knife? This wolf had a_ knife?! _—was too fast. “I can see you when you’re moving.” The beast growled triumphantly, swinging once more._

_Despite their bravery, the child fell, alone and without aid in the snow._

 

* * *

 

Frisk’s hands moved quickly as Undyne prepared her next attack. “Please, I don’t want to fight!” they signed, and although it was clear that she saw the message, she simply attacked again. Frisk blocked. Undyne roared.

 

The battle continued.

 

* * *

 

_The child huffed and puffed, spinning on heel to face the foes chasing them. The armor-clad monsters—woo boy, real monsters, they still weren’t over that quite yet—stopped about twenty yards back. Two of them. The third had disappeared._

_“Human! Surrender now, or we shall be forced to take you by force!” one roared, and the child trembled, pushing up the bill of their cap quickly, blowing their hair from their eyes._

_“Oh, sure, you and what army? I ain’t seen anyone else tryin’a pick a fight here!” the child returned, voice raised over the sound of the falls behind them. “I haven’t hurt a single one of y’all, and then you start chasin’ me, I-I-I only shot those three because they were gonna kill me, just—just leave me well enough alone!”_

_“It is the duty of us as members of the Warrior’s Guild to stop any troublemakers! You’re a dirty human, part of the kind that nearly killed all of us, and trapped us all down here to rot!” Two more warriors appeared from the darkness of the cavern, barely visible in the low light._

_The child was shaking in their boots. “Maybe other humans did, but not me! You can’t pin the blame on me for something I had no part of! That ain’t hardly fair!”_

_“Your Soul will be another step towards freedom,” the second warrior spoke, moving forward menacingly. “It may not be just, but it is only fair.”_

_The child scowled, lined up their shot. The one stepping forward stopped dead, and their armor clattered as it fell to the ground, empty but for dust beginning to spill from within. Another shot, another. Clouds of dust rolled across the ground and twin clattering filled the cavern. One warrior stood alone. The spear was in their hands in moments. The child lined up the shot._

_Click._

_Click, clickclickclickclickclick. Click click. Empty. That was their last shot._

_“Leave me be!” the child shouted, taking a step backwards. The warrior began walking forward. “I said leave me be!” Clank, clank, clank (clickclickclick), clank (clickclick), clank. The child felt tears beginning to fall from their eyes. “Leave me be, damn it!” In their desperation, they threw the gun, and it hit the warrior square in the helm. They stopped for a long moment, thinking about this. They stood over the young human, who tried to take a step back and—_

_They fell over the edge of the cliff, the water far, far below not offering any comfort from the fall. The child screamed as they fell. The human had been unjustly hunted, and had finally fallen._

 

* * *

 

Frisk popped the Unisicle in their mouth, blinking away waves of dizziness. They were still doing fine, food-wise. They stood taller, hands flashing, grinning widely. “Is that the best you can do?”

 

Undyne smiled right back, and her next volley was significantly faster.

 

Oh, now that’s just rude.

 

* * *

 

_The child looked down at the sea of lava._

_It was very hot here, in… wherever they were. Very, very hot. The human was beginning to wonder if it might’ve been better to restock back in that cold place, where people were friendly and not always trying to mooch food or—_

_They felt their Soul being pulled into battle, and they groaned._

_The fiery spirit… person… thing, whatever it was, grinned at the human. “Boy, boy oh boy. I heard that there was a human around, a human. Is that you?”_

_The human smiled. “That’s me, a human!” they said pleasantly. Some of the monsters were nice enough to just leave them alone as long as they were a novelty and didn’t do anything rude. They could block attacks if they had to, just had to stay still and stand their ground. “How’s your day going so far?”_

_“My day is going wonderfully! I’m a bit peckish is all, bit peckish I mean. Say, that’s a frying pan there in your hand. Have anything to eat, human? Anything?”_

_Their smile faltered. “Well… actually, I only have a little food left, and, I was hoping to save it until I could find some more.” Their own stomach was beginning to grumble._

_“Human, are you being greedy, not sharing food, not sharing with me? Boy oh boy!” Their flames flickered higher. “I always knew humans were rude, tried to kill all of us, kill us, sent us Underground and won’t even give me food, won’t help me out.”_

_“I need my food, I’m sorry,” they said firmly, standing their ground. The monster’s flames flickered dangerously. “You’ll have to ask someone else.”_

_“I could always just burn_ you _up, human, burn you right up.” The young human held up their frying pan, crying out as small orange flames clipped at their skin, volleys of heat. They gulped down the small portion of food they had, and the flames grew in intensity with the monster’s anger. “Eating food right in front of me, like I wasn’t hungry, don’t care a bit, do you human?”_

_“I’m sorry!” they cried out, hiding best they could behind their pan._

_The human fell under the waves of heat._

* * *

 

Undyne swung her spear.

 

Frisk ducked, and in the process noticed that there was no longer green magic ringing around their ankles. They took the opportunity, dashing away, Undyne left, stunned, in the dust.

 

“GET BACK HERE YOU LITTLE BRAT!” she shrieked, and she caught Frisk by the collar, trapping them again.

 

Wow, this hallway sure was long.

 

* * *

 

_The child felt tears coming to their eyes._

_The stone had hurt to fall on, only slightly cushioned by grass and dirt. This corner they had chosen in the room wasn’t far from that place. There was a little dip in the dirt where they had landed._

_So far, the… the whatever the thingys were, had left them alone. Being cute was an easy way to escape danger. They were little enough that the little thingys weren’t all that scared of them, and the occasional thingy that wandered in just peered curiously, sometimes tried to say something, but they just curled up tighter until they went away. Once, when that wasn’t enough, they waved their little wooden play knife until they left again._

_It was kind of cold._

_They knew that momma always said, “If you get lost, don’t go anywhere. Just stay where you are and I’ll come and find you.” They just had to wait for momma. She would come eventually. They had always been called a very patient child, especially for their age. It was probably because they were real mature. They were just as good as the older kids. That’s why they knew they could stick it alone if they left for a little while._

_They didn’t mean to trip._

_They were lucky, having brought some bandages just in case they scraped their knee. It turned out getting wasted pretty early on. Well, either way, they just had to wait now. They spent their time practicing braids on themselves, doing and undoing their hair until their hands started to cramp up. They fiddled with the toy knife. They waited and waited and waited._

_The child fell asleep, and wasn’t woken up by the small, meek warrior’s attack, dying without fanfare._

 

* * *

Frisk was pulled to a stop again, already beginning to fall short of breath. They were down to half their food now. This hallway was a whole lot longer when someone was chasing you, huh?

 

“I don’t want to fight,” they protested, breathing hard, the ends of the ribbon on their hands beginning to fray at the ends. Undyne narrowed her eyes, huffing angrily. “I don’t! I just want to be friends!”

 

Undyne’s eyes widened slightly, and she stuttered in her motions. Her attack seemed slower. Or was that just Frisk’s imagination? It was really hard to see straight after spinning around so much, so quickly. Somewhere in their mind came the murmur, “She remembers someone.”

 

They tried their best to smile at her through the rain of spears.

 

* * *

 

**_*I remember someone. But… who remembers_ me?**

 

* * *

 

Frisk brushed hair from their face. They sensed more than felt that they were almost halfway out of HP. Exactly enough for half a Bisicle.

 

It was so cold.

 

* * *

 

_“Who is Asgore Dreemur?” they had asked, blinking slowly at the motherly figure. She had stilled for just the barest moment._

_“He is… the king of this place,” she had said calmly (a forced kind of calmness)._

_“Why would he want to kill me?”_

_“Who said he did?” She stared them down. They didn’t flinch. Despite what the other kids said, they were much stronger than they looked, and wouldn’t back down if they knew they shouldn’t. She looked back down at the food she was making. “Well… alright, I suppose it is worth telling you.” She said softly. They waited. “He… issued this, this decree. Fairly recently, actually, nearly a year ago. The decree is stating that all humans that fall into the Underground must die.” They raised an eyebrow. “To say the least, I disagree with it. Not all humans are evil. Not very many are at all, exceptionally few, to be honest.”_

_And then they had gone and left the safety of the one monster down here that didn’t have the desire to kill them. Good work, there._

_Monsters had attacked, of course, and they hadn’t hesitated to strike back, if only in self-defense. They didn’t actively hunt any monsters, but they did fight back. They had a very good kick, and monsters found it hard to move in close for an attack, due to the ruffles of their skirt. The dust was a bit weird, and got all stuck everywhere. Pretty soon, nobody challenged the human anymore._

_A warrior, there to avenge their fallen people. They twisted, they spun, keeping tempo in their mind, keeping their footing. They were hit, they fell out of step, they cried out in pain, they lost the music playing through their head, they stumbled clumsily. They leapt, moving as if to kick the monster’s head clean from their shoulders._

_They were batted away like a fly. The human fell to the ground._

 

* * *

 

Frisk saw the light at the end of the tunnel.

 

Literally. They could practically smell the fumes of Hotland. The wind seemed to be pressing them forward, sucking them in. Cold and warm air currents. Cool science, it was really—nope, no, paying attention again, that was the weird backwards one again! Oh no!

 

Dashing away again, Undyne practically on their heels, and suddenly, their phone rang.

 

If they could’ve said something, they probably would’ve told Papyrus to leave a message and they would call back when they weren’t about to be murdered.

 

* * *

 

_They shivered._

_It wasn’t that it was cold. In fact, the temperature was actually pretty… temperate. A nice medium, not too hot, not to cold. But for some reason, literally everything was damp._

_They moved to wipe their glasses off on their shirt, only to end up making them dirtier in the process. It was really hard to see in these hardly-lit rooms. They wished they had tried to pick a… what was it called again? They checked their notes. Ah, an Echo Flower. Would they still be lit up after being picked, or would they fade out? They might try it later if they found a silent one. It seemed a bit rude to pick one that had a whisper in it already._

_They straightened their glasses and moved forward. Whatever they did, they_ would _persevere!_

_They tapped the lantern they passed by idly, continuing forward, eyes narrowed at the words on their page. If what the monster back by the abyss said isn’t entirely wrong, then they should be nearly to the end of this section, onto the final stretch pretty soon. Good. The words were a bit blurry, having fogged glasses really was the worst. They would worry about that when there wasn’t a whole society of monsters that were after them._

_Getting foggier, actually._

_No. Wait. Was it getting darker?_

_They dashed, trying desperately to find another lantern, tripping over themselves in their haste, eyes wide behind thick spectacles. They fell into pitch black darkness, and felt fear clawing its was down their throat. They could almost imagine footsteps. They could imagine a hundred words that kids had said about how weak they were. How they were such a big ‘fraidy cat. How they needed to be less of a wimp._

_They fell to their knees, hands tracing over the paper, trying to find any helpful words, and when the lights came back on, they didn’t even have time to see what was about to kill them before the world faded to black again._

* * *

 

Frisk poured out the water, and Undyne sputtered back to life, looking prepared to cough up a lung. She stared up at them, scrambled to her feet, wide eyed. Her hands twitched, but to spear came. Her eyes flitted, but no words came either.

 

Undyne turned and walked away.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [hi and welcome to "hiatus until i get my life together"  
> seriously though, short hiatus on this story while i get other Life Shit in order. i need to do original work in time for some writing contests as well as having to sort through some other garbage. believe it or not, i intended to write fanfic for fun to start with. its started feeling more tedious, and that's... taken a toll on how good it is, i guess? i'm basically dropping this for a few weeks until i find the fun again and can promise quality. otherwise, uh, cool, have a rad day. oh, and i'll explain my soul theory either next chapter or in the chapters after that. cool. ^^; kthanksbye]


	17. 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [From beneath several inches of papers rises some random asshole, looking disheveled and confused.  
> ...  
> How long was I out?]

 

It was always oddly cold in the house.

 

Not that the family minded, of course. Being skeletons, of course they weren’t particularly bothered by slightly warm or cold temperatures, as their sense of temperature was slightly impeded due to the lack of actual skin. Bitterly cold weather did hurt them a bit more readily, however, as generally the soft mushy fleshy junk like skin and fat and muscle was meant to insulate and protect bones. However, each of them had their own interpretation of what was too hot and too cold. Sans was always cold, and Papyrus was always hot, and Gaster was more concerned with it smelling like the city air. Turning the fans on kept up a medium kind of circulation, but the constant drone of sound drove Sans out of his mind. They bought some candles and got the smell of the city out, but Papyrus said that he was pretty sure they would burn everything down with how absent-minded his eldest brother was and Sans straight-up not paying attention, not to mention how stuffy it was now. There was a constant cycle of fans and opened windows and blankets and closed windows and fans again that started to feel almost like a game, seeing who’s going to lose their mind first.

 

Not even once did any of them consider moving to somewhere with a thermostat.

 

It was something like a large apartment where they lived for most of their lives, or maybe a small house, on the inside of which each and every inch was entirely homely, in the strangest possible way. The door to the bigger room where Papyrus and Sans slept had marks on either side of the door, carved into the wood, marking off their heights as years went by. Sans hadn’t done it since he was in middle school. Papyrus was still going, probably because he was waaaay taller than Sans was at that age and he liked the bragging rights. The dinner table was marked up from years and years of wear and tear, and each and every creak of the floorboards was familiar to them.

 

It was rare that all three of them would ever be in the same place together, and such events often led to injury of person or property. And so, was their dynamic. Papyrus was elated to be there, Gaster was elated for his youngest brother, Sans was elated for his eldest brother, Papyrus was elated that his brothers were elated—and so it continued.

 

Oddly enough, the times during which Papyrus was still a baby were the best times for them.

 

Sans being only five years old at the time, he didn’t remember all that much. He remembered some kind of “Before”, before the house, before the door with the little pencil-pen-pocketknife marks going up and up, a time before the table that had always been firm but aged. He remembered something that Gaster had always called ‘Hospital’, where he was alone a lot, but when the doctors were there, they were always smiling at him and telling him he was so clever and one day he would be very great indeed.

 

But then one day he only remembered walking and walking and walking, places he didn’t remember having been too, Gaster holding his hand and telling him it was just fine, and telling the little bundle in his other arm that everything was just fine, and Sans remembered being given the bundle and looking down at a tiny, tiny skeleton. He remembered looking up and asking, “Who is this?” and Gaster smiling and saying, “That’s for _him_ to decide.”

 

He remembered meeting the king, the king being so so so tall, and looking down and being so so so confused, and the doctors that liked Gaster better were all there and they were all so relieved and Gaster had told them, “There’s three of us now. You said we could leave when I was older, but there’s three of us, and I want to leave _now._ I was too young to decide for Sans, but I’m old enough for _him._ ”

 

And the king looked at the doctors, and the doctors looked at Gaster, and Sans looked down at the little bundle. “I want him to grow up just like normal kids. I want him to be free too.”

 

And the king had softened and made promises and Sans wasn’t listening, because the bundle had begun making little noises, sad little noises and looked like it might cry and Sans dropped his bag, shushing and patting and murmuring words of comfort, and when he looked up the king was kneeling to talk to him and he didn’t know if he should bow or not and then the king was asking softly, kindly, if he could hold him for a moment.

 

Then a lot of things happened.

 

Sans remembered sitting and eating at a table with four chairs, only three of them being used. One of the two small ones was Sans, and one was Gaster, and one was The King Of All Monsters (who Gaster finally mentioned quietly “didn’t like being treated like he was better than other people”), who held the little bundle so, so, so carefully. They sat at this big table in this little house and Sans remembered that the word Gaster had said was “homely”.

 

Sans remembered a lot of things.

 

In the Old Place (which is what Gaster had started calling Hospital after all the scientists had left for a little bit so Asgore could just chat), they hadn’t had a lot of things, so instead they clung to information, ideas, any and everything that they could gather, about who they were, about what they were. Gaster was the oldest, and, as he explained to the King, the weirdest. Sans was the second youngest, and, once again to steal the words of Gaster, the quietest. And the baby was new, so they couldn’t be sure yet.

 

At some point after Sans’s first cup of tea but before the third, the baby started fussing. Despite Asgore’s best efforts, he wasn’t calming down at all. Sans was surprised and thrilled when he was given responsibility over the small life. He felt something in his chest swell as the little guy stared up at him with curiosity, a gaze Sans couldn’t tear his eyes from.

 

Asgore asked plenty of questions, and Gaster gave him most of the answers. Some were serious. “How much schooling have you received?” “What was the living situation between you two?” “Have the doctors mentioned any health conditions and such?”

 

But others were just… nice.

 

“So,” Asgore hummed softly, his voice carrying naturally. “Sans and Gaster. Are those nicknames?”

 

Gaster went to answer, but stopped. He paused for a few moments, then glanced at Sans.

 

“Um…” he said slowly. “I… don’t actually know. If it’s a nickname, then they must’ve given it to us, because I don’t remember.”

 

Sans shook his head. “I found out a few months ago. They chose them from computer fonts.”

 

“And why is that?” Asgore asked curiously.

 

“When G showed up, they filed the project under “Project F”, but they already had a “Project Foxtrot”, so they had to make them different. So they put it under “Project Fountain” because the wing he was gonna stay in was the one with the fountain in it, but then the person messed it up and put “Fontaine” because they were really bad at spelling, and they just rolled with it and it took people forever to notice, and then it was too late. So then they had to name him later on, and they all were trying to suggest different stuff, and people started getting really competitive, writing whole paragraphs and stuff about how their name was the best and why. And it kept escalating and eventually someone got mad enough that they submitted a printed out essay written in Wing Dings about it, and then people started arguing about fonts, and people started decoding the paper and sending it back in in different fonts, and someone sent in a whole stack, in Aster. And everyone thought it was really funny to see this massive stack of paper translated from Wing Ding to Aster, so that was the name they went with.”

 

Asgore and Gaster both stared at him for a few long moments, silent.

 

“The janitor lady was really nice and told me the whole story,” Sans said. “Then people called you G-Aster, then just Gaster or Dings or whatever.”

 

“…And why did they choose yours?” Gaster asked slowly.

 

“Because I was sans a name, and they stuck to the font theme. I think I was supposed to be Sans Serif, but, then everyone started writing it as Comic Sans because it was funny.” He swung his legs.

 

Asgore considered him for a few moments awkwardly. “Ah… well, you aren’t the first skeleton monsters, of course, and before then they all followed a theme of some kind as well.”

 

“…What happened to them?” Gaster asked.

 

“Well, skeleton monsters were always rare, but in the war, they were some of the bravest and strongest warriors. They went to the front line. Very few survived, and all died of age that made it. I’m sorry.”

 

Gaster sat up. “So where did we come from then?” he asked, a gleam in his eyes. Curiosity, his constant bane and benefactor. He was very good at knowing when there was something to be learned, a trait Sans had begun picking up as well.

 

Asgore stared down at the table sheepishly, hands folded in front of him. “That is… not my business to say,” he said slowly, looking a bit sad.

 

Gaster stood up, leaning forward. “We deserve to know,” Gaster said, serious. “If we don’t get parents, we at least deserve to know what our purpose was supposed to be.”

 

“Purpose?” Asgore asked, befuddled.

 

“Purpose!" Gaster insisted. "We all have a reason for existing—and that’s our starting point for who we become. But we never got a starting point, we’re just here, doing nothing, contributing and detrimenting nothing, and it is NOT fair. If not for my sake, for Sans, for—for my new baby brother. Why are we here? Was our existence accidental? Causation or correlation? Did anyone even WANT us?!”

 

“We don’t know why we are,” Sans simplified, voice naturally quieter. “We just are. We want to know.”

 

Asgore looked sad for a few moments, then glanced down at the table, then up at them, then back to his teacup. He sipped cautiously, placed it down as gently as he could. “Well. As with all monsters, a skeleton child is born from the two parents wishing for a child with all their hearts,” he began slowly. “But… you, child, were born from something else.”

 

Gaster was silent under Asgore’s stare. Even the baby had gone quiet, perhaps sensing the atmosphere.

 

“The first human to fall came long ago. So very, very long ago,” Asgore said quietly. “As decades passed, humans fell more frequently. The last human to fall came… a few years before you were created.” He turned his cup, fiddling with his hands. “With this human’s passing, we reached a total of six human Souls, and so, are only one Soul away from being able to shatter the Barrier.”

 

He sipped slowly, and moved to refill his cup. The baby made a little sound, and Sans patted his head gently to show he hadn’t been forgotten about.

 

“Hopes were very high for just a little while. But with high hopes came impatience. So close, we wanted to leave, and to leave now. And to fuel the fire, we were making great strides in finding out the exact nature of the Soul. Some of the scientists were more vehement than others, and they believed that they may be able to create an artificial Soul.”

 

His cup clinked against the saucer. His hands were shaking.

 

“They were angry. Bitter. Because years were passing and they hit dead end after dead end. Soon, the former Royal Scientist was so filled with frustration, so filled with… with bitter vehemence, that they thought, “I want for there to be another human Soul, and I want this more than I want life itself, more than I want my home or my title or even to continue on”. And so…” Asgore sniffled, and Sans realized with a jolt that he seemed to be on the verge of tears. “That is… exactly what happened.”

 

The room was terribly silent. “They… they died?” Sans asked softly.

 

Asgore was fidgeting again. “You see, when… well. Monsters are made of two things. Magic, and love. Magic derived from their love, love derived from themselves, and they are derived from magic. Hopes, dreams… those are what monsters need in order to survive. Should a monster feel their dreams shrivel, their hearts break, their hopes die… they, too, will fade. And so, for the greater good, their hopes and dreams so powerful and so great, wishing only to be able to save us from this place, with their spite and wishes alone they created a new Soul.” Another sip, trying to steel his voice again. “Now, a human Soul cannot be created. Only by a human giving it willingly or dying and leaving it behind can one be taken. It simply isn’t possible. Should a monster wish to have a child, then they may. But this wasn’t them wishing for a child, this was them wishing for a human. So their magic, rushing towards a singular goal, instead did what it thought was right, and remembered another long-gone prospect. The closest thing to a human that it could think of, feeding off of half-remembered glimpses and ideas. A skeleton was born, and the former Royal Scientist was no more.”

 

Gaster looked striken. Asgore looked remorseful. Sans looked on.

 

“So… for me to be born, someone had to die?” Gaster whispered.

 

Asgore shook his head. “No. Their hopes and dreams halfway fulfilled, instead they became… different. They disappeared, but didn’t die. Few remember them anymore, and from the last memories of those who witnessed them after what happened, apparently they couldn’t much remember themselves either. Halfway memories, strange remarks that didn’t quite make sense.”

 

Gaster sat back in his seat, and Sans recognized the look on his face. He was thinking, considering, pondering. Sans looked down at the bundle in his arms again.

 

“What about me?” Sans asked gently.

 

Asgore glanced at him, expression soft. “You, child, were created of many wishes, congregating into one. Your brother’s wish to be understood, the doctors’ wishes for him to be happy, and the still-present wish for a human Soul. Your birth, although somewhat unstable, didn’t drain so much from one, and instead drained a bit from all.”

 

The baby was grabbing onto Sans’s shirt now, pulling with all of his tiny might, and Sans lifted him a bit higher up. The baby bopped him on the side of the face with a tiny hand, and Sans felt laughter bubbling from out of nowhere in his chest.

 

When he looked up, Gaster was smiling down at the baby, and Asgore looked pleased as well. Sans looked down at him and patted him right back gently. “Pap, pap,” he said quietly, and the baby made a happy little sound, repeating his gesture.

 

“Smart little guy,” Gaster murmured as Sans patted him a few more times, them going back and forth now, taking turns.

 

“This child was born mainly from pleasant emotions,” Asgore said, smiling. “The hearts of all of your doctors working as one, congregating into one more child.”

 

Finally the baby stopped patting and just made happy little squeaks, kicking his legs clumsily from within the bundle of blankets.

 

Sans felt his smile fading just slightly. “…We get to keep him, right?” he finally asked, looking at Gaster.

 

Gaster’s smile was gone in an instant. “I don’t know. When you showed up I didn’t see you for a pretty long time, until you were crawling at earliest.”

 

Sans hugged the baby to his chest tightly, eyes going wide. “No,” he said firmly. “They can’t take him away. He’s our little brother.”

 

Gaster looked down at the baby, then up at Asgore. The king looked solemn. “Please?” he asked softly, hopefully.

 

“…My child, you’re only fifteen,” Asgore said, eyes sad. “You cannot possibly be able to take care of two children on your own.”

 

Gaster stood up from his chair, expression steely. “I can and I will,” he said firmly. “I got out without them noticing once, and I’ll do it again if I have to. If you won’t let us leave, then I’ll escape on my own. I refuse to make them grow up trapped inside a facility.”

 

Asgore looked at him, surprised, the grief in his expression only growing. Sans stood too, and shifted the bundle so that he had a free arm. He took Gaster’s hand with his own, and his brother glanced down, gratitude in his eyes. Sans smiled at him, then looked back at the king, expression stony. “We won’t give up,” Sans said. “We’ll keep trying forever if we have to.”

 

“Even if it takes forever.” Gaster confirmed.

 

Asgore stared between the two of them for a few long moments, contemplating. He looked down at the teacup in his hands. “Why must children always be so strong-willed?” he sighed to himself. He finally placed down his cup, standing and walking to Gaster, placing a hand on his shoulder. Gaster shifted slightly to compensate for the weight. “My child, of course I will allow you to go,” he said. “The funds previously used to provide resources for you will go towards providing food and lodging. I myself will assist in any way that I can to make sure you are given a stable life. However, I repeat. This will be difficult for you, and once you’ve left, you may not be able to go back again. Is what you’re trying to do… really worth it?”

 

Gaster nodded once solemnly. Asgore smiled, patting his shoulder and turning to walk towards the front door.

 

“If you are certain,” he said. “I will go and begin preparing for your move. If there is any unfinished business… this is a good time. Otherwise, feel free to help yourself to all that I have in the kitchen.”

 

“Thank you,” Gaster said evenly to the king’s back as he left. As soon as he was out of sight, Gaster collapsed on the chair, relief covering his face.

 

“We’re gonna go live somewhere else now?” Sans asked after a few seconds.

 

“Yeah. Yeah, we, we really are,” Gaster replied in signs, as he tended to do when his emotions were running high.

 

“…Does this mean we have to go to school now?” Sans asked, face scrunching up slightly.

 

Gaster laughed.

 

Inside this house, by the crackling of the fire, it was warm.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [It has been six months. Six whole months. Dude that's. That's almost a birth's worth of months. What the hell. Why did I do this. Bet y'all thought this was dead but man. Man. rip in peace, me.]


	18. nasopharyngitis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [i refuse to get on an update schedule and you cant make me]

 

Sans’s phone buzzed in his pocket.

 

He snatched it up in an instant, staring down at the screen, squinting hard to see the text through the brightness of Hotland. Notification on his Undernet account. From… Alphys? He opened the message.

 

ALPHYS: sans i am about to ACTUALLY die

Puntella92: wow you only message me when your life is in danger

Puntella92: i see how it is

Puntella92: rip in peace you fake friend this is karma

ALPHYS: OMG, you really changed your undernet handle AGAIN??

Puntella92: yeah what about it

ALPHYS: its been like, two days since you changed it last

Puntella92: time is an illusion created by sentient creatures in an attempt to make their actions hold meaning in the scheme of a universe they cant comprehend

ALPHYS: …are you okay

Puntella92: i took a philosophy course in college

Puntella92: thats basically how i passed the class

ALPHYS: fight me

ALPHYS: meanwhile i am GOING to die sans

Puntella92: congrats you’ve achieved the lifelong dream they grow up so fast

ALPHYS: sANS

Puntella92: ok ok whats happening

Puntella92: cant take a joke, god

ALPHYS: ok so the human we were *supposed* to be watching????

ALPHYS: they got to undyne right,,

ALPHYS: and they’re absolutely just messing with her

ALPHYS: and I’m kinda scared that she’s gonna kill them

Puntella92: nah they havent died yet i think

Puntella92: not gettin any deja vibes

ALPHYS: i’m so confused??? why are they provoking her???????????????

ALPHYS: omg they’re really good at the whole dodging thing

Puntella92: i noticed

Puntella92: apparently my brother tried to battle them

Puntella92: tried being the key word there

Puntella92: he got tired of throwing childproofed attacks at them and just gave up because he didnt want to actually kill them

Puntella92: bet theyd be kickass at dodgeball

ALPHYS: woah are you watching this it’s awesome :0

Puntella92: dude im on my shift right now, no time to watch kids get their shit pushed in

Puntella92: some of us have jobs you know

Puntella92: that arent watching anime and avoiding phonecalls for ten hours a day then getting paid the big bucks

ALPHYS: you mean professional trash

Puntella92: yeah exactly

ALPHYS: i happen to be the best in the trash business you don’t understand the pressure,,,,

Puntella92: fine, battle me for it

ALPHYS: and lose!!!!

Puntella92: you just said youd lose al

Puntella92: do try and keep up

ALPHYS: wait

ALPHYS: crap -_-‘

Puntella92: now thats just embarrassing

Puntella92: i have like 1 hp come on have some faith in your ability to literally just hit me with a candy wrapper

ALPHYS: pfffffffffffft!

ALPHYS: pfffFFFFFFFFFFT!

ALPHYS: *disbelief noises*!!

Puntella92: what

ALPHYS: i’m pretty sure it’s actually impossible to have 1 hp sans

ALPHYS: how are you even alive????

Puntella92: im good at dodgeball

ALPHYS: oh my god, wait a second

ALPHYS: i just now got the joke with your new handle

ALPHYS: puntella. like patella, the knee bone.

ALPHYS: and like a teller of puns.

ALPHYS: WAIT, AND THE KNEE BONE LIKE A KNEE SLAPPER

ALPHYS: I HATE YOU WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS

Puntella92: took you long enough

Puntella92: quite simply i cannot be tamed alphys

ALPHYS: UGH SANS NO

Puntella92: sans yes

Puntella92: sooooooo anyways i hear really angry shouting down the hallway

Puntella92: is the kid getting closer to my station or

ALPHYS: oh crap

ALPHYS: yes yes okay they’re on their way

ALPHYS: (Top Five People Who Make You Forget To Do Your Freakin Job,,,,, Comedian Edition)

ALPHYS: they look like they’re trying to run away from the fight, smart human :0

ALPHYS: whats your plan now??

Puntella92: im going to do my job

Puntella92: by not doing my job

Puntella92: did paps call the kid yet

ALPHYS: no???

Puntella92: just tell me when he does

Puntella92: thatll be my cue

ALPHYS: wow your brother has REALLY bad timing LMAO

Puntella92: cool see you in a second

ALPHYS: what are you doing?????

 

He stashed his phone in his pocket and leaned his elbows on the sentry station, eyes falling shut. Not to brag, but he happened to be a pretty damn good actor, and napping was so easy he could practically do it in his sleep. He heard the pitter-patter of feet dashing past him, followed by the thunder of clanking armor. Undyne stopped in front of his station briefly, ranting on angrily for several moments about his laziness and really poor timing before she took off running again.

 

He pulled his phone back out as he stepped his way back home, a quick trip through a rip in space. He came out in Snowdin and quickly pulled his jacket tighter around himself. He always forgot how weird it was going from a hundred degrees to zero degrees in less than a second. He made for Grillby’s, scrolling through the messages.

 

ALPHYS: what are you doing?????

ALPHYS: sans????????????????????

ALPHYS: ?????????????

ALPHYS: oh

ALPHYS: OH

ALPHYS: wow, good on the spot thinking there!

ALPHYS: bought them some time!

ALPHYS: wait…

ALPHYS: sans holy shit you have to help undyne!

ALPHYS: she can’t stay in hotland for this long with her armor! she’s gonna die!!

Puntella92: shes okay, chill

Puntella92: the kid has this on lockdown dont even worry about it

ALPHYS: oh thank god TTnTT

ALPHYS: i wish you would warn me about this stuff, that scared me ;;n;;

ALPHYS: okay undyne is leaving them alone, they’re fine!

ALPHYS: whew that was almost really bad ;m;

Puntella92: alright the human is now successfully set loose into the wild of hotland

Puntella92: do you think you can handle the kid for awhile

Puntella92: i dont like being in hotland for too long, pap gets worried if im not at my snowdin station or home

ALPHYS: okay, sure

ALPHYS: WHEW i was worried for a minute there!! aaAa

Puntella92: whatd i tell you

Puntella92: the kid is really nice and not even a little bit of a threat                                 

Puntella92: yknow being a literal child and all

ALPHYS: i see your point now, don’t rub it in >.<’’

ALPHYS: okay, i’m going to take really good care of them and make sure they stay safe

ALPHYS: it’s the LEAST i can do after they saved undyne like that =^u^=

Puntella92: d’awwwwwwwww

Puntella92: more w’s

ALPHYS: what??

Puntella92: nothin

Puntella92: just you and undyne being adorable

Puntella92: and in love

Puntella92: this is a classic romcom scenario i have no idea how you two arent together

ALPHYS: shut uuuuuup!!!!!  >///.///<

Puntella92: haha okay okay

Puntella92: just watch the kid you weirdo stalker weeb dweeb trashlord

ALPHYS: you wanna GO sans, you!!

ALPHYS: geek loser memelord nerd bonehead!!

Puntella92: woah

Puntella92: alphys

Puntella92: you wound me

Puntella92: and that would basically instantly kill me because i have 1hp

ALPHYS: sans stop

Puntella92: someone get the feather duster im a goner

Puntella92: its too late for me…

Puntella92: tell my brother… i love him……

Puntella92: avenge me papyrus……… avenge me………………

ALPHYS: rip in fucking peace nerd

Puntella92: honestly

ALPHYS: but srsly how do you have 1hp???

Puntella92: shrug maybe its me just being lazy

Puntella92: or maybe i am our…… LAST HOPE.

Puntella92: B)

ALPHYS: spell it out with me here, sans

ALPHYS: N-E-R-D!!!

Puntella92: thanks

ALPHYS: no, i mean it though

ALPHYS: hope is usually at LEAST twenty, and i mean for the weakest possible monsters as /babies/!

ALPHYS: how did your hope get so low??

Puntella92: haha idk bad luck or something

Puntella92: its whatever nobody ever fights me anyways

Puntella92: since i know everybody and all

Puntella92: thats just the way it goes

ALPHYS: i mean maybe but…

ALPHYS: are you okay, man?

Puntella92: hey come on im always okay

Puntella92: youre not my real mom quit with the interrogation tactics

Puntella92: what do you caaaaaare or something

ALPHYS: yeah yeah :P bluh bluh dork

Puntella92: so uh im gonna go talk to pap real fast

Puntella92: the kid should be on their way now i think

ALPHYS: yeah theyre talking to some guards now i should have plenty of time to get ready and junk

ALPHYS: hey

ALPHYS: you know that like

ALPHYS: it’s okay to talk to me, right?

Puntella92: yeah i know

Puntella92: i dont really

Puntella92: look can you just drop it please

Puntella92: im okay its not a big deal

Puntella92: im fine

ALPHYS: because i get it, you know?

ALPHYS: i totally understand

Puntella92: yeah

Puntella92: i know

Puntella92: alright i gotta go

Puntella92: can you watch the kid please

Puntella92: im for real here like this kid is an actual infant they could be murdered by a strong wind

ALPHYS: i’ll be careful!!

Puntella92: juuuuust making sure

ALPHYS: later then! (=^w^=)/)

Puntella92: bbye

 

Sans stood at the door to Grillby’s, staring down at his phone, and his grin felt more painted on than ever. He must be slipping. That’s a bad thing. That’s a very bad thing. If he was slipping, then things were going to start their way downhill, fast. He had to be able to play it cool. Find his chill. Snow way he could slip up this late in the game… it wouldn’t be very ice to be set back. He thought of a few more jokes to psych himself back up. He had to be focused.

 

When he walked into Grillby’s, his smile shone brightly, and he already had a joke ready to go when he hopped up onto his usual seat. Did you hear about the satellites that got married? The wedding wasn’t much, but the reception was amazing!

 

Dogamy groaned at the joke, and Dogaressa was quick to try and stifle her giggling. Sans buried himself in telling jokes, getting a laugh from the other patrons, tried to forget about the fact that the human he had promised to protect was probably walking through the narrow paths of Hotland, and could easily slip and fall into the lava below them, or even just get scalded by the steam vents leading out from the CORE and trip in their surprise. They could reset, of course, but he was still pretty sure that a kid shouldn’t be subjected to that kind of thing. Kinda mentally scarring. Not to mention that the woman behind the door would absolutely kill him.

 

Shit, he would have to keep checking up on them, wouldn’t he?

 

Why did this human have to ruin his laziness shtick? It was going so well.

 

* * *

 

 

Frisk carefully considered the options before them.

 

[A: Undyne.]

[B: Asgore.]

[C: The human.]

[D: I don’t know.]

 

They glanced at the timer, only to find that it had stopped entirely. They made a show of dramatically rubbing their chin, faking hard consideration. Alphys looked like she might implode from embarrassment. They turned this way and that, looking between Mettaton and Alphys, and at the ground just in front of them. Finally, they stood up straight, and with a little smile, drew the letter “A” in the air with one finger, the other hand making the sign along with it.

 

Mettaton looked gleeful. Alphys looked like she was wishing for death.

 

The show continued.

 

* * *

 

 

Papyrus gasped, leaning forward on the couch, knawing at the fingernails he didn’t have. “Oh no, thank goodness Undyne isn’t watching this!” he groaned anxiously. “She would be mortified!”

 

The small white dog looked up from its spot beside him. “Yip!” it barked cheerfully.

 

Papyrus scowled, crossing his arms again and sitting back. “Well, you are just no help at all,” he muttered. The dog’s tail wagged cheerfully, either ignoring his words or not understanding them. He watched with renewed intrigue as Mettaton wrapped up the end of the episode, blasting off dramatically, and the screen cut to bars of color again.

 

Papyrus relaxed, leaning his elbows on his knees. The dog hopped up, looking happy, sensing that the show was over and there was the possibility of attention in its future. Papyrus spared it a glance. “Well, the human is doing alright…” he said. “I just hope they’ll be safe. Dr. Alphys is very smart, I’m sure she’ll know exactly how to help them stay out of trouble. Hotland is the worst, but she’s a clever cookie!”

 

The dog hopped onto the floor, sniffing curiously at Papyrus’s foot.

 

“I wish I could be of more help," Papyrus said, frowning. “As it is, all I can offer is encouragement and emotional fortitude! Which, of course, is incredibly useful, but not nearly as useful as, say, fireproof armor or perhaps a first-aid kit. While enthusiasm is very useful, I do not feel overwhelmingly helpful just now. Undyne would be furious if I outright helped them, of course, which is important to consider…” He sighed. “Why is being a good friend so difficult? Besides the obvious reason being that Undyne wants to murder the human?”

 

The dog found particular interest in Papyrus’s shin, ears perking up as it sniffed.

 

“…I should just try my best to ensure that the two become friends,” he finally said, resolve crossing his features. “I cannot suffocate them by trying to help. Too many cooks will spoil spaghetti, as the saying goes. I think. You get the idea.” He placed his hands on his hips, jaw set. “The human is strong, and certainly no slouch, going by their skills in solving puzzles! They’ll be just fine, and if not, they know where to find me! I, the Great Papyrus, in the name of this lumpy, gross couch, swear that I will be there should the human ever call!”

 

The dog tried to nip at the bone of Papyrus’s leg, and he jerked it away just in time.

 

“No! Bad dog! Worst friend!” Papyrus scolded. The dog looked up at him happily. He glared at it for a few seconds before he finally just rolled his eyes, summoning a small bone and tossing it to one side for the dog to fetch. “Honestly. Why do I put up with you. You’re just the absolute worst,” he sighed as the pup pranced off to catch the projectile.

 

Outside the house, snow continued to fall, and if one stared long enough, it was almost reminiscent of TV static.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [one of these days, writing fanfiction is gonna break me. im just gonna snap and post the entire bee movie script one letter at a time. i have that shit in my files, i'll do it. i really will. (next chapter when im done with it i hope)]


	19. dacted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [would you look at that, and it took less than 6 months this time]

 

Frisk stood before the boat.

 

“Tra la la… care for a ride?” trilled the Riverperson warmly, distantly.

 

Frisk nodded happily, and stepped onto the boat, sitting down towards the back end of it. The Riverperson looked forward again.

 

“Then we’re off,” they hummed, and despite the boat having no oars and the water seeming relatively calm, they broke into motion.

 

Frisk sat with their legs crisscrossed, elbows on knees, chin on palms, and waited patiently. The Riverperson was really quite wonderful. They had such interesting things to say, each and every time that Frisk talked to them. It was great. The cloaked figure sang gently under their breath, the notes rising and falling like the sound of water lapping against the hull of the boat. Frisk leaned over briefly to stare into the water, and the water seemed to stare right back.

 

“Tra la la… the water is very wet today,” the Riverperson hummed, song pausing. Frisk looked up at them, but they hadn’t turned around. They returned to sitting still, and the humming resumed.

 

Frisk thought for a few moments, then signed, “How come you don’t charge to ride the boat?”.

 

The Riverperson didn’t speak for a few moments, continuing to hum. Just as Frisk was about to try again with longhand, they spoke. “Tra la la, it doesn’t really matter…”

 

Frisk thought this over for a few seconds.

 

“…Tra la la, why don’t you sing with me? Tra la la,” the Riverperson sang.

 

Frisk paused, looking up at them. Their hand moved to their throat.

 

“Tra la la…” the Riverperson repeated, pausing for a moment and repeating the series of notes. “Tra la la…”

 

Frisk finally swallowed hard, shifted their jaw, and tried to sing the notes. “Tra-aa-ah, lah la-a…” Their voice was weak under the strain, and they stopped quickly, face turning to the ground.

 

A few moments passed in silence. Suddenly the notes rang through the air again, now sharper, clearer. Frisk looked up, and the Riverperson was facing them now. Frisk realized they were whistling. The notes repeated, and Frisk tried again. They fell flat, and Riverperson continued regardless. The tunes sounded familiar, and Frisk tried to move their hands along with the words, vaguely remembered from somewhere.

 

“Oh it’s the wrong number... the wrong number song. We’re very very sorry that we got it wrong,” they signed along as Riverperson repeated the tune.

 

Riverperson nodded slowly, moving onto a different song, and another, Frisk following along best they could. One sounded like a quaint little house by an ancient tree that could never keep its leaves, melancholy and cold despite a crackling fire. One sounded like a puzzle and a burst of enthusiasm, dreams and strength and adrenaline. One sounded like everyone’s hearts beating as one, a chase, spinning with a shield and wide eyes. Yet another sounded like a messy little lab, piles of unwashed dishes, books and a dusty work table, cluttered with diagrams. One was a web of lies and treacherous perils, the smell of tea and eight-legged terrors. Another was glamor and flashing lights, dancing and posing and the show going on and on.

 

Frisk found pause as the Riverperson began to whistle a song that sounded like twilight beyond a stretch of magic, hearts and bones breaking, averted gaze. It sounded like a faraway memory, like somewhere in between. It sounded like never giving up, despite everything, and Frisk was sad.

 

The Riverperson finished the song alone, and silence fell for a few long moments. The sound of lapping water was all Frisk could hear.

 

Riverperson began to hum, and it sounded like falling, like landing safely, like a warm embrace and a gentle voice. Like a statue with a bright red shield, timeless. Like… something Frisk could not remember. It was familiar. It was everywhere. It was somewhere just outside of their… memory.

 

“Why?” Frisk signed to the Riverperson, and they didn’t pause until they reached the end of the song.

 

“…Tra la la, you expect to arrive at a place you never asked to go to?” they asked.

 

Frisk blinked, wondering what the Riverperson was trying to say. “…Waterfall, please?” they finally signed, hoping that was the correct answer.

 

The Riverperson nodded, and the pace of the boat remained unchanged, but somehow within a few moments the bank came into view. They stopped at the shore despite the Riverperson making no motion to make it do so.

 

“Come again some time. Tra la la,” they said patiently. Frisk got up off the boat, and looked at them for a moment. Frisk finally walked away, considering all that had happened.

 

They heard the sound of piano as they walked towards Undyne’s house.

 

* * *

 

 

Alphys sighed as she looked at the empty food bowl on the ground. She looked around the empty bedspace.

 

“H-Hey! Save some for e-everyone else, Endogeny!” she called. Nothing answered her, and she desisted, shifting the pile of DVDs and VHS tapes all into one arm so that she could pick up the bowl, placing it atop her stack of things. “Honestly, g-guys,” she murmured.

 

There was the sound of movement somewhere far off in the lab, scratching against the tiles, promptly followed by the constant buzz of the air conditioning falling away entirely. She sighed, aggravation creeping into her expression.

 

“AND S-STOP TURNING OFF TH-THE A/C!” she shouted. The sound quieted for a moment, and a soft whine echoed through the lab. Alphys rolled her eyes, turning and walking back to the elevator.

 

The ride back up the elevator was quiet, and Alphys spent it, as she always did, contemplating things. She would need to go and get more food soon enough to feed Lemon Bread, and Reaper Bird seemed to be acting up again with the whole “personal space” thing. Alphys spent a few moments wondering if it would be worth it trying to separate everyone, then she wondered what it’d be like, already so scared and confused, now with nobody else to rely on, to talk to...

 

She could understand that, to an extent.

 

(The guilt continued to corrode her.)

 

* * *

 

 

it is crucial. for you to understand. that you have changed many things. now that you remember.

 

THE CHILD. AND THE SECOND CHILD. OR RATHER, THE FIRST CHILD. ARE BOTH ALIVE, AND THEY ARE ALSO DEAD. AS IS SCHRODINGER’S CAT. AS ARE YOU. AS IS PAPYRUS, MORESO. AND I, AM NEITHER.

 

do not hesitate if they begin to attack you. they will not spare you. and if they do. you must not hesitate then either. for they are also. born from hopes. and descended from nothingness. and they too, returning, bring it home with them.

 

THE RIDDLES. ARE COMPLEX. RIDDLES. ARE DIFFICULT TO SOLVE. WHEN THE ANSWER IS BEYOND YOUR GRASP AS A MORTAL. I AM NEITHER. MORTAL. NOR IMMORTAL. BECAUSE DEATH. AND LIFE. ARE BOTH EQUALLY IMPOSSIBLE. AND I AM IN PAIN. AND SO YOU MUST UNDERSTAND. YOUR LACK OF UNDERSTANDING. THE RIDDLES. THE RIDDLER. THE ANSWERS.

 

perhaps they will kill you. and if they do. everything ends. everyone ends. and the false ending. comes to hand. so they must kill you. and you must not die. your ending must be false. and the false ending becomes inadequate. you have already. begun to prepare for this. unwittingly.

 

YOU MUST GIVE UP HOPE. IN ORDER. TO SEEM WEAKER. AND FALSE HOPES MUST BE GAINED. AND THAT WILL SAVE YOU. IF THE CHILD DOES NOT SAVE ANYONE. OR IF THE CHILD CHANGES THEIR MIND. I HAVE BEEN WATCHING. AS HAVE YOU. AND IF THEY COMPLETE THEIR PUZZLES. THEN THE RIDDLE WILL BE REVEALED. AND THE ANSWER WILL CONTINUE EXISTING.

 

you. must stay strong. as long as there is saving to be done. as long as saving has been done. as long as they save. you must also save. in case. they are fickle.

 

FOR WHAT IT IS WORTH, I BELIEVE IN YOU.

 

although i am not here. i am also hopeful. the slightest. for you. because you have always protected. the ones. who ~~can~~ ~~do~~ will not save themselves.

 

I WILL MEET THEM SOON. OR PERHAPS NEVER. SPACE’S ABSENCE. LEAVES NO ROOM FOR TIME IN THE EQUATION. AND THE INEQUALITY. MUST BE RECTIFIED IN THE MEETING.

 

you must stop looking. until i am found. and focus. on the illusion of the present. that i no longer live in. and be ready. for things to go wrong. if they do. and if they do not. you will prepare.

 

I WILL WAIT. IN THE DARK. FOR THE OUTCOME OF THEIR CHOOSING. I SEE MANY. AND THERE ARE ONLY TWO. THAT MATTER.

 

matter is also an illusion. that you must make an illusion with. the human. soon. stops seeing the dust on their hands. below their feet. and underfoot. underground. and so its absence. is duly noted. and unnoticed. you have a task.

 

THE UNDERGROUND. WILL GO EMPTY. BUT FOR ONE SINGLE SOUL. BOTH ARE DEAD. TO ALL. BUT BOTH ARE ALIVE. TO ONLY ONE.

 

wake up. i cannot speak. i could not speak. i have not spoken.

 

WAKE UP.

 

wake up.

 

WAKE UP.

 

“WAKE UP!”

 

* * *

 

 

Sans jolted awake and saw the captain of the Royal Guard towering over him, a glare in her eyes and her hair singed at the ends.

 

He blinked once, twice, and quickly turned, began looting through his pockets. He dumped some things out—packets of ketchup, crumpled up sticky notes, loose change.

 

“Man, Papyrus’s brother, you really sleep like a rock,” Undyne chided with a smirk full of thinly-veiled annoyance, a little confused.

 

He wasn’t sure where he got yarn from, but that was in his pockets apparently.

 

“Sans. His name is Sans. You know this,” Papyrus said from the door, arms crossed.

 

“Yeah, whatever.” It was an old joke—the only joke that they shared. Undyne didn’t have very much fondness for Sans, because on almost every level, they were bitterly contradictory, and Sans could respect her space on that. But Papyrus cared about both of them, so eventuallyl, they had to find _some_ common ground. Undyne compromised enough to allow there to be a running joke. Sans compromised enough to never bring up work between them, especially not around or about Papyrus. That was the unspoken agreement between them. And it seemed to work. “Anyways, Papyrus was gonna set up the guest bed, since my house is under, uh… high speed renovation.”

 

“It’s on fire.”

 

“We’re clearing room for new stuff.”

 

“Pianos are very expensive, please tell me that it survived.”

 

“Gonna rework the floor plan,” Undyne said, ignoring Papyrus entirely. “So uh, you taking a nap on my new temporary bed is gonna be a problem.”

 

“Uh huh,” Sans said absentmindedly, having finally located his pen and pad of paper, scribbling down furiously, expression set in concentration.

 

“…So uh… move?” Undyne said, a little more forcefully.

 

“Sure thing,” Sans said, not even looking up yet. Undyne looked over at Papyrus, who shrugged. Sans continued scribbling out for a few seconds before glancing over the few pages quickly. He exhaled, closed the pad, and shoved it back in his pocket. He looked up.

 

“Oh, hey Undyne, when did you get here?” he asked cheerfully.

 

Papyrus restrained her before she could punch him in the face, and Sans laughed.

 

“Woah, chill out there, queen of the sardines,” Sans said, hands up in mock surrender. “Take it down a notch.”

 

“LET ME AT ‘IM PAPYRUS!!!” Undyne yelled, trying to escape his grasp.

 

“PLEASE DON’T MURDER MY BROTHER, MURDER IS ILLEGAL!!!” Papyrus replied, meeting her volume easily.

 

Sans just stood and walked up the stairs casually, looking pretty happy with himself. “You really need to get ahold of that temper of yours. _Eel_ be out of your hair momentarily,” he commented, and Undyne’s fury was knocked up a few notches, and Papyrus nearly lost his hold on her. Sans watched as Undyne turned on Papyrus and they ended up wrestling, Papyrus trying to both escape, and also make sure she couldn’t run after Sans. Undyne was just trying to win. Sans walked to his room and entered, closing and locking the door calmly.

 

About two minutes passed before he heard the sound of feet thumping up the stairs and the sound of something slamming into his door, the handle rattling futilely. A short pause fell, and Sans heard Papyrus yelling from downstairs.

 

“YOU’RE NEVER GOING TO CATCH HIM, UNDYNE!” Papyrus yelled, sounding defeated. “HE’S PROBABLY ALREADY LONG GONE.”

 

“JUST ONCE I WOULD LIKE TO WIPE THAT SMUG LOOK OFF HIS FACE! JUST ONCE!” she yelled, hitting the door again for emphasis.

 

“LISTEN, HIS ATTITUDE IS IMPENETRABLE. HE’S LIKE A STEEL WALL WITH A SMILEY FACE PAINTED ON THE SIDE. HE COULD PROBABLY GET HIT BY A TRAIN AND HE WOULD DIE MAKING A TERRIBLE JOKE,” Papyrus yelled. “LIKE. ‘WELL EVERYONE ALWAYS SAID I NEEDED TO GET MY LIFE ON TRACK’. OR SOMETHING EQUALLY MORBID AND STUPID.”

 

A short pause fell again. “Dude, same,” Undyne finally laughed, seeming to retreat from the door. “But I’m seriously going to just knock him out eventually, low HP or not.”

 

“You can definitely _try_ to.”

 

Sans pulled out his phone, leaning on the doorframe, and opened up Undernet. He began typing out a message.

 

“guess who just got a lead motherfucker”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [who has two thumbs and not enough sleep... all of us probably
> 
> oh yeah and i have a tumblr. @thetriggeredhappy for anyone who wants to come tell me i'm trash, which honestly who wouldn't? yeah.]


	20. System.out.println("?");

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [[...]]

 

Alphys very much didn’t understand what was going on.

 

Like, clearly Sans knew what was up, or at least thought he did. It seemed like what he was saying was true, because if it was a lie, it would be the most elaborate and well-crafted lie ever. Like, composing such a lie would be downright unrealistic and very hard to pull off successfully.

 

She only understood three core things about the situation. First of all, somehow there was time travel going on, which was already going to trip her up, she just knew it. Second of all, Sans somehow could tell when time travel was going on, either with tech or just observation or maybe both. Thirdly, the human was somehow responsible for time-hopping, and Sans was somehow responsible for their safety.

 

That was all she knew for sure, and she had the impression that Sans wasn’t much better off than her in that respect.

 

But something had changed, apparently.

 

ALPHYS: what do you mean, you got a lead?

ALPHYS: a lead about what??

Puntella92: something

Puntella92: everything

Puntella92: im honestly trying to figure out whats going on myself

Puntella92: can i just like. think out loud for a bit?

Puntella92: helps me think

ALPHYS: yeah okay, hit me! :>

Puntella92: so the kid was here and reset over this thing that i did

Puntella92: and i think i made some serious progress

Puntella92: because

Puntella92: just like

Puntella92: okay so it might be a good idea to just call you

Puntella92: i dont wanna have to type all this out

Puntella92: is that cool with you?

ALPHYS: ughhhhhhhhhhh,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

ALPHYS: but I hate phone calls!!

ALPHYS: they’re the worst!!!!

Puntella92: alphys pleeeaaase

ALPHYS: ughhhhhhhh

Puntella92: come onnnnnnn

ALPHYS: u g h h h h h h h h h h h h h . . .

Puntella92: come on you big baby

Puntella92: youd be cool with it if i were undyne

ALPHYS: ahfdjkshvsodhjo

ALPHYS: blocked, reported, uninvited from my birthday party

Puntella92: haha, yeah thats fair

ALPHYS: okay, fine, I GUESS I could deal with a phone call....

ALPHYS: but I won’t be talking much probably, I’m eating

Puntella92: okay cool

 

A beat passed and her phone started ringing. She picked it up before the first ring was over. “Hi,” she said simply, shifting to hold her phone between her ear and shoulder so she could eat her noodles. “S-so what happened?”

 

She could hear that his voice was distinctly energetic, and he was probably pacing back and forth from the sound of it. “Okay, so you know the kid? Time traveler, pretty straightforward, they just use it to keep themselves alive in battles and whatever. Basic stuff. They can also use it to just jump back if something didn’t go how they wanted it to, but they try and avoid doing that because I've lectured them about it before.”

 

“Mmhmm,” Alphys hummed through the noodles.

 

“But the previous run-through they didn’t die, I don’t think, they just weren’t happy with the outcome of the run and what happened and stuff, so they reset even though I didn’t want them to bring me back and all, but even though they reset it the effects of the Core didn’t get fully separated from me I think, so I can remember certain stuff from before the incident—the first one with the Doc, not the one with me, although they’re technically like the same thing sorta but just different times? Or maybe the same time because technically all time is condensed in there I think? What I don’t get is what the difference is between me and W. D. in terms of outcome, because in either situation we both definitely died from the fall at the very least, and—“

 

“W-wait, y—“ Alphys was interrupted as she choked on noodles, and coughed harshly a few times. “You died!?”

 

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I definitely died, like I super died.” His nonchalance was worrying. “But apparently it didn’t go like I wanted it to go, because—“

 

“Woah woah woah, Sans, wh-what are you saying!? How y-you ‘wanted it to go’, I…” Alphys cut in, eyes wide. “Did—did you—?”

 

“…Oh! Oh, oh no, no, that’s not…” Sans paused for a few seconds. “…I was trying to make sure this, uh… really bad thing was gonna be gone, but it would take a lot of power to kill it, and I also wanted to test this theory about the Core, so I took it down and fell in the Core and figured that—“

 

“You…” Sans went quiet at the tone of her voice. “You died?”

 

“I… yeah. Yeah, I did,” Sans confirmed after a few quiet moments, discomfort clear in his voice, hesitation, wariness.

 

Alphys felt a sob bubbling up in her throat, and despite the hand she pressed over her mouth to try and muffle it, apparently Sans heard anyways.

 

“Oh god, no, oh shit, okay don’t cry I—I’m fine pal, I’m good now because the kid reset and—“

 

“Y-y-you said it d-d-didn’t… you d-didn’t want them t-to… to bring you b-b-back, I… Sans I’m so sorry I just… oh god—“

 

“Alphys, it’s okay, I’m back now! I’m safe and sitting in Snowdin right this very second and I’m alive and it’s okay, there—“

 

“Oh g-god, Papyrus, d-d-does he know?” Alphys gasped, tears flowing freely. “D-did you even s-say anything b-before—? D-did you—?”

 

“Alphys!” Sans borderline-shouted, and Alphys clammed up. A moment’s pause fell, and she heard a sigh from the other end. “Just… he can’t remember the time hops, and I’d prefer that he… not… find out what happened. I just… I don’t want him to know.”

 

Silence. “…Wh-what do you think he’d do, if…?” Alphys started, only to trail off.

 

“Honestly? I have no idea,” Sans murmured. “All I know is that he definitely wouldn’t be happy about it. And, uh, I don’t know about you, but… Papyrus being happy is kinda a big deal, y’know? He… it’d hurt ‘im, real bad, I think. He’d just be…” Sans trailed off. Alphys heard him take a shaky breath. “Please just don’t make him think about it. And don’t make me think about him thinking about it.”

 

“…Okay. I-I won’t tell him, or… or anyone,” Alphys said finally.

 

“And to answer your second question, no, I didn’t,” Sans said, voice… almost cold.

 

“M-my second question?” Alphys repeated.

 

“I didn’t say anything. To Papyrus. Y’know, before I…” He trailed off, but Alphys understood his meaning, realization hitting hard and fast. She blinked, eyes locking on a specific part of her desk. She wrung out her hands.

 

“…He deserves a-at least a… a-at least a goodbye from you, Sans,” she said, the words simple, her voice light, and its meaning heavy.

 

Sans didn’t reply. In his defense, she didn’t know what she would say to that, either, if she was in his place.

 

“If you n-need any of my help, I’ll d-do what I can,” she said, voice firm. “Don’t hesitate to text me, okay?”

 

“Okay. Thanks a billion, Al,” Sans replied, and he sounded tired. “Uh, so hey…”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“You’re, uh, you’re not like… still crying, right?”

 

A beat of silence, then she was snickering, one hand moving to muffle it, and after a second relieved laughter came from the receiver.

 

“Because, uh, I hate just lettin’ people cry, y’know? It's um... my big bro instincts I think,” he continued. “Just uh, wanted to… make sure, I guess. Double check.”

 

“N-no, Sans, I’m not crying anymore,” she said, still half-laughing.

 

“Okay. That’s good. Cool.” A pause. “I’m uh, I’m gonna just… hang up now.”

 

“Okay. B-bye, Sans.”

 

“Later.”

 

Click.

 

* * *

 

  

***You picked up the Burnt Pan.**

 

Frisk looked it over, weighing it in their hands thoughtfully. They wondered just whose pan this was, and why it was so thoroughly charred and heat-warped. It went into their box with the rest of their collected items.

 

They completed the starship shooter puzzle without difficulty, and moved into the dark room where they knew Mettaton would appear to begin the cooking show. They made a big deal about getting all the ingredients, stalling as they looked over the whole kitchen, and feigned dramatic surprise when Mettaton pulled out the chainsaw, hamming it up as best they could. They couldn’t be sure due to his lack of features, but Mettaton looked… bemused by their performance.

 

This time around, the fact that all of it was scripted was much more obvious to Frisk, and they felt a little silly about how long it had taken to notice. How convenient that Alphys had made a jetpack with _exactly_ enough fuel to get them to the top… how very… lucky that was.

 

Then the show ended, and Frisk turned to look back at the entrance to the kitchen set, and—

 

A chill went up their back.

 

A flash, the mere afterimage of yellow and green. The impression of the possibility of something that they wished wasn’t familiar.

 

Several emotions settled in their chest. Fear was a big one. Confusion, just a bit. He’d been following them? For how long? Concern, a subsection of fear. The one that surprised them the most was _anger._ Real, tangible anger, making them clench their fists, furrow their eyebrows, grit their teeth.

 

For a millisecond, Frisk felt the unmistakable urge to fight Flowey.

 

This was a whole new can of metaphorical worms opened up, and Frisk found themselves delving into deeper moral questions in the same way that someone would delve into a vat of oil—instantly trapping themselves, with a sense of panic surrounding the whole ordeal.

 

_Is it okay to fight Flowey? He had been nothing but bloodthirsty and murderous since Frisk met him. He tried to kill them. He tried to kill everyone._

 

But killing is wrong. It’s not okay to kill. By killing Flowey, they would be just as bad as him.

 

_But they weren’t killing everyone else like Flowey was—they were protecting everyone_ by _killing Flowey._

 

By killing Flowey they would be proving him right. They couldn’t do that. The world was NOT kill or be killed, and they refused to let Flowey win on that argument.

 

_What if he killed your friends? What would you do?_

Go back, like when Sans died. Just return to before. They would save their friends that way.

 

_What if he didn’t stop? What if he killed them and killed them and killed them? What then? Eventually you would get tired of going back. What if killing Flowey was the only way to stop it? What then?_

 

No. Nobody would die. Not while Frisk was still alive and breathing.

 

_…Well, Frisk was just a kid. They were so young. They shouldn’t have to deal with all of this, with… death, with the idea of killing. The idea of sacrifice._

 

Wait…

 

_How much longer could they keep this up? The dying, the… the resets, having to do the same things over and over, getting beaten within an inch of their life over and over, the torment, the torture that all of this was bringing—_

 

Wait—

 

_And what was it all for? Did Frisk really think they could befriend everyone, and what would they do if they got to the barrier? They couldn’t pass through without murdering Asgore, and had no real reason to anyways, they had a life now, they had a family now and—_

 

Just wait a moment—

 

_There was nothing left for them on the Surface, nothing that could compare to their loved ones down here in the Underground, to the friendships they’d formed (some twice over) and fought to keep and witnessed cracking apart and repaired again and they were just a kid, they were just kids—_

 

Who were they trying to convince?

 

 

…

 

 

It was in that moment that Frisk realized they weren’t alone.

 

Well, physically they were. Standing here in the beginnings of Hotland, looking over at the Core, they didn’t have company, persay, but… there was something else there. Something else _here_. Some… _one_ , else. Murmuring alongside their thoughts. Alongside their conscience, and most of the time, in line with it.

 

They were almost afraid for a second, but it passed. The buzzing of magic and energy thrown off from the massive machine in the distance was oddly soothing.

 

They looked down at the ribbons tied around their hands, eyes checking them over. _If you’re cuter, monsters won’t hit you as hard_ , a small voice chimed in Frisk’s mind, which before hadn’t even been questioned as it passed, but was now clung to and examined from all sides. They then fished through their bag, and pulled a pair of too-small ballet shoes from inside. _These used shoes make you feel incredibly dangerous._ The Manly Bandanna next. _It has seen some wear. It has abs drawn on it._ Their old stick from when they first fell. _Its bark is worse than its bite_.

 

Their hand hit cold, and they pulled a small snowball from their bag, their amused expression melting into something softer, more content. They checked it over.

 

_Please take this to the ends of the earth,_ whispered a voice Frisk couldn’t quite identify, earnest, true.

 

Frisk smiled.

 

They wondered briefly whether it would be a good idea to tell anyone about this. What could they even say? “Hey, there’s this little voice in my head and it says stuff to me but nothing bad, just normal stuff, also it's not my voice and it makes jokes a lot.” They would sound ridiculous. What could anyone even say about that? Besides, it wasn’t doing anything _wrong_. It was just… there, alongside Frisk.

 

They... decided they could keep this to themselves.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [[happy anniversary, Undertale. let's see where we can go from here, yeah?]]


	21. retrieveSaveData.true

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [[this fic is older than my little cousin and that sure is... something]]

 

*You love your brother very, very much.

 

*He’s a good person. A really, really good person. That’s really refreshing, to see such a genuinely good individual, to see one so often, and even more refreshing was the fact that you were being treated like a good person too, with love and kindness and understanding, and not like you were—

 

*Anyways, apparently that wasn’t just a monster thing, how good he was. Everyone else saw him as a sweet kid, too. Even among monsters (the kindest beings in the world, clearly) he was considered good. It was no surprise when he ended up being known as the “nice” one—he was the softer of you two, and… being honest, the fact that he was a monster gave him an advantage over you, socially. People loved him, and while they loved you, too, it wasn’t quite as much as they loved him. You liked him more too, really.

 

*And just between the two of you, you wound up being the “smart” one, for some reason. You didn’t think you were smarter, and you told him so. He was just as smart as you, you just happened to be a bit faster at getting the answers. He could solve the same problems just as well, it just took a little tiny bit longer than it took you. And you were only smarter at the technical things, not… socially.

 

*He’d said, “You know what I mean!”

 

*…Yeah, you know what he meant.

 

*Mom and Dad didn’t seem to think either of you was superior to the other in… well, anything. They only ever divided you two by interests—your brother loved helping Dad out in the garden and playing catch, while you liked drawing inside and helping Mom cook whenever you could. So, they planned accordingly. Apparently your brother and Dad would talk a whole lot while they were gardening. You and Mom didn’t. It was a comfortable silence, a relaxing silence. A good counterpoint to the other half of the family’s energy.

 

*Of course, Mom and Dad were busy with work a lot. Like, a _lot,_ a lot. So you ended up having more than one adventure with your brother while they were busy. He liked watching you draw and play video games (because you were the best at it) and you liked listening to him reading stories or just talking about his day (Dad always said he’d be a great public speaker one day). Play-fighting was your favorite because it challenged you in new and interesting ways physically, and his favorite because he loved making up the story of the battles. You liked the idea of knowing how to handle yourself in a fight, how to keep yourself safe, and he liked the idea of writing an epic story almost entirely on the spot. You usually let him win, if only because it was a good ending to the story he’d woven.

 

*(You never realized until after the “battle” had always ended that you were the bad guy in the story. You were always the bad guy, but you let him be a hero, because he was a good enough person for it, and you didn’t think you were.)

 

*You could read the longer and more complicated words a bit better than him, maybe because you were eight whole months older, so you were the one who read aloud from the history books to your brother. It wasn’t really your idea or his idea—you both got up individually and decided to read the books on the top shelf.

 

*Because you’d heard things about human Souls and the barrier and magic, and Mom and Dad refused to go into detail, no matter how much you begged to hear the story.

 

*Because he worried about how quiet you’d been lately, and he seemed to know that finally getting some real answers was the only thing that would make you feel at ease. You both sat down, and he listened to you carefully as you read aloud, from start to finish, the answers that nobody else seemed to want to give to you.

 

*He’d been calm at first. Because he only half-understood, and because the story was so old is was more like a fairy tale in his mind. Just words he’d heard over, and over, until they didn’t hold meaning anymore. Just letters; syllables. Then you explained slowly and clearly to him.

 

*”I’ll have to die in order to help you leave the Underground,” you’d said.

 

*Then he cried—and you hated seeing him cry, because you could never stop yourself from hugging him and he always got tears and stuff all over your shirt, and that sucked, and… and also because sometimes it would make you cry too, and that sucked, because crying sucked. You didn’t want him to cry. You didn’t read any more of the book, stashing it away where he couldn’t see it.

 

*Then Mom found the book in your room a day later and there’d been a long talk around the table. Mom and Dad had talked for a long time, and your brother had cried again, and everyone drank a lot of tea during the whole ordeal. Mom and Dad had tried their best to give a whole, honest explanation about things. There were mostly ideas and thoughts that you’d pieced together already, but at least now they’d officially told you. Now you could ask questions, and they would give you answers. Mom seemed deeply worried when she saw how well you took the news, Dad following a few moments behind, because you were calm about the topic—your death being the key to their freedom. You’d been so very calm.

 

*”It sounds like it’s only fair,” you’d said when she’d questioned you about it, shrugging nonchalantly, unfazed. “You were slaughtered and trapped by humans, so just seven humans dying in return to free you—that sounds fair. If anything, more humans would need to die to _completely_ balance it out.”

 

*They’d looked so sad, all of them. They looked at you with a kind of horror. It didn’t make sense to you. It was just simple math—this many people died to save significantly more people.  You never understood why they seemed so horrified by it, not even later. They tried to sway you from that idea. Nobody should have to die, they protested, but that was just naïve. You would’ve died one day anyways—everyone dies eventually. That’s just how it works.

 

*Your brother was the saddest about it, but your Dad followed close behind, surprisingly. Mom had to be the one to call it off—you wouldn’t die for them, not a moment earlier than your natural life would have it.

 

*But the seed of an idea was planted in your mind, and one year later it finally began to grow. Because Dad had gotten really sick and Mom had been so upset and so was your brother, and you were the one who had to laugh it off because otherwise you’d all just be sad all the time, but that didn’t stop you from hurting so, so bad.

 

*You’d hurt him so, so bad. You were the one who was reading the recipe out loud, and you’d only laughed when your brother put flowers in the mix. Now? You felt like dirt. You felt lower than dirt, worse somehow. You felt like nearly a murderer—a half-murderer. He could’ve died, and it would’ve been your fault. Patricide and regicide in one fell swoop. What if he’d actually—?

 

*You reread a few books to take your mind off it. Anything to take your mind off it. Without realizing, one in the stack was a history book.

 

*The idea had grown so far then, and finally it began to bloom.

 

*”Six, right? We just have to get six.”

 

*Six (plus you), and monsters would go free… right? It was straightforward. Simple.

 

*And so you died.

 

*You felt yourself die. How many people get to feel themselves die? Or… well, everyone dies eventually, so that’s a bit silly… nonetheless, you did. And it was more painful than you’d thought it would be. You thought that if Dad only ate a bit and got really sick, and he was big, you could eat a lot and it would be fast, because you were small. It didn’t work that way. It hurt, a lot. Even with you being… willing to give up, it took a long time. It hurt. It hurt so badly.

 

*But the plan continued. The plan had to continue. This wasn’t about you. This was about all humans and monsters. So he did what you’d asked.

 

*You loved your brother very, very much. So you died for him.

 

*Then they tried to kill you. He’d cried over the sunset (and where his heart was hurting, so was yours), and you had to steer him down to the village, telling him that “You’ll have all the time in the world to look at the sunset once we’re done, okay? We need to keep moving. We can’t stop now.”

 

*And they didn’t even let you speak, they just tried to kill the both of you, and you thought you should fight back, that the ones who attacked you were practically volunteering to die to free monsterkind, that it was only fair, that he couldn’t die too because of your stupid, horrible plan, because of your mistakes, and he’d—

 

*And you didn’t have control, anymore. You couldn’t see, or open your eyes. You could just feel arms wrapped around you and hear ragged, gasping breathing and hear him screaming out for someone, for anyone, and you wanted to scream back. You wanted so badly to call out to him but your lungs couldn’t move and—

 

*And it was loud for a little while, then quiet, then there was crying and mourning and you wanted to scream that you were still in here but they couldn’t hear you because you were—

 

*And it was cold and dark and silent and uncomfortable and something was wrapped around you and it was so quiet and you were so scared and so tired and it was so _dark_ and then—

 

*Mom’s voice and being carried again by arms that felt so similar to the other ones, to the last time you were carried (last in that it was previous and last in that it was the final one), the only difference being the muffling of the sound, the muffling of everything even more than before, and then not long later was the sound of a shovel and the muffled sound of crying and it was dark but less cold and uncomfortable—

 

*And for so, so long there was silence, only the occasional voice up above (if you were right about which direction was up), sometimes crying and sometimes talking and you hung on to every sound because sound was so rare now that you’d been—

 

*And nothing, during all of it. Nothing at all. Just silence and nothingness for so long, too long, so long you wondered if you’d ever truly existed, wondered if the time Before had just been a dream, and you felt like the nothing was clawing at the edges of your being, of your Soul, trying to rip pieces away to feast on, trying to drag you down into it, drown you, suffocate you, wither you away there where there was more Nothing. You couldn’t move. You couldn’t think.

 

*But somehow, you would get through. You stayed determined.

 

*No, that’s right, you just have to… to stay determined. Like Dad always said, no matter how bad it got, you would stay determined.

 

*You held on to the little things. One day you heard a bird singing—it filled you with determination. One day you heard leaves being raked, cascading over one another in that entirely unique sound of theirs—it filled you with determination. You made up songs. You made up stories. You stayed determined.

 

*You were scared, yes, you were terrified and lonely (almost as much as you’d been way back when you had first tried to go and—) but it didn’t matter. This must just be a bad dream. Just… a horrible, horrible dream. You would wake up and everything could be okay again.

 

*Even if it took what felt like a million years. And boy, did it take what felt like a million years.

 

*And then the sound of a “thump” that reverberated, not through the world for more than a moment, but through you, through your very Soul. Reverberated until you could almost convince yourself that you could actually feel it.

 

*And you opened your eyes.

 

*** _You_ opened your eyes.**

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [[one reason i decided to move to a once-per-two-week basis rather than back to my weekly schedule is because i'm gonna be pretty hecking busy in these upcoming months. the other reason is because i feel like with more time i can get better content? either way, i've got fail-safes in place to make sure this is a clean run through the end of this fic  
> so, uh, yeah. this should be good.  
> hmu @thetriggeredhappy on tumblr, otherwise have a good one]]


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